Thomas Mulcair – canada.comhttp://o.canada.com
Canada's great, shareable storiesFri, 18 Aug 2017 04:47:16 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/http://1.gravatar.com/blavatar/15edae77ebfa450ee5bb897103fdef31?s=96&d=http%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngThomas Mulcair – canada.comhttp://o.canada.com
As MPs return to work, here’s what to watch forhttp://o.canada.com/news/as-mps-return-to-work-heres-what-to-watch-for
http://o.canada.com/news/as-mps-return-to-work-heres-what-to-watch-for#respondSun, 25 Jan 2015 20:54:37 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=583632]]>MPs return to the Commons this week after a six-week break amid significantly changed economic circumstances, and a political dynamic that has been roiled by the precipitous, unexpected fall in the price of crude oil.

With this in mind, here is a primer on some of the parties’ and leaders’ key tasks, challenges and opportunities, as they enter this critical, final sitting of the House of Commons before the launch of the formal 2015 election campaign.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. [THE CANADIAN PRESS//Dave Chidley]

Liberals: The Objective

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals now hold 34 per cent in public support, based on the aggregate measured by threehundredeight.com. That’s a few points off the high 30s, where the party had hovered for much of the past two years.

Much of the recent drop stems from a dip in support in Ontario, as Conservatives highlight Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s strong stand against terrorism and his experience in guiding the Canadian economy through the 2009 Great Recession.

So, the Grits’ key task over the next four months will be to recapture those errant swing voters, by offering an economic program they hope will compare favourably with the Conservative recipe of income-splitting and childcare credits. In order to be competitive that plan will need to offer a tax reduction of its own — one that appeals to a larger population base than does the Conservative plan.

Liberals: The Obstacle

Because so much of the party’s new brand has been tied up in its leader, Trudeau, and because he has a record of gaffes, he must avoid making any mistake that solidifies the Conservative and New Democrat message that he’s not up to the job of being prime minister.

Running a close second, among potential pitfalls, would be policy nostalgia among Grit candidates and workers. If the party trots out ideas that read like a re-tread of platforms from the 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2011 campaigns, it becomes an easier target for Conservative attack ads.

Liberals: The Opportunity

To produce a detailed, credible economic plan that includes broad-based tax cuts and measures to stimulate trade and growth, and an industrial plan for Ontario and Quebec, and thus “replace” the Tories as the party deemed best suited to help ordinary Canadians weather difficult economic times.

NDP leader Tom Mulcair. [THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld ]

New Democrats: The Objective

This one is brutally simple: To survive with 90-plus seats intact, and thus retain Official Opposition status. With the aggregate of polls showing public support at 21 per cent, victory appears out of reach, and even seat retention becomes an uphill fight. But nothing is impossible: Jack Layton proved this in 2011.

In Quebec, the New Democrats must capitalize on leader Thomas Mulcair’s popularity, credibility and name recognition. In Ontario and parts west, the party must redouble its efforts to present him as a sober, thoughtful, careful and pragmatic leader, who would not borrow and spend wildly if given power. They must get him out making speeches, shaking hands and kissing babies in Ontario, especially in the Toronto hinterland and southwestern corridor.

New Democrats: The Obstacle

Mulcair faces a pitched battle with Trudeau in Quebec, which is home turf for both. That will divert NDP resources and focus away from Ontario, where Mulcair is not well known and where the party’s brand is in sorry shape, based on the recent byelection record. Southern British Columbia is the other potentially fallow field for the New Democrats. But there again, Trudeau is competitive. So the leader must be in three places simultaneously: a difficult trick.

New Democrats: The Opportunity

The Trudeau Liberals have yet to present an economic platform, or any platform. The NDP could therefore slip up the middle with an aggressive, ambitious national industrial strategy, in keeping with its traditional support for and from unions, to preserve and restore well-paying private-sector jobs in Canada. Again, the key target market would be vote-rich Ontario.

In order to pry Ontario seats away from the Conservatives, this plan would have to be business-friendly in tone. Mulcair would then need to take it on the road: that would be an opportunity for the party to better showcase his considerable rhetorical skills, which are often in evidence in the House of Commons but not well known beyond the parliamentary precinct.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper. [THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck]

Conservatives: The Objective

Stephen Harper, of course, seeks a fourth-straight election victory and a second majority. And no one who has watched his and the Conservative party’s evolution since the late 1990s would count him out. Though the Liberals are catching up on fundraising, Conservatives remain champions in the multiple-small-donation universe. They have a deeply committed base.

The Tories have been blindsided by the decline in the price of oil from above $100, to below $50, causing them to delay their spring budget. But their political task hasn’t changed: they must persuade middle-class Canadians, that is to say the majority, that prudence and the devil we know are a better bet, in uncertain times, than change and a fresh face. They are aided in this by the fact that their policy kit is now and has always been crafted mainly with middle-class voters in mind.

Conservatives: The Obstacle

Actually, it’s a list. First and foremost is the aforementioned plummeting price of oil, which has thrown the government’s economic planning into turmoil, at the most delicate of times. Second is the looming trial of suspended Conservative Sen. Mike Duffy, in April, which could dredge up this monster story from 2013-14. Third is the ticking clock: Canadians historically are tuned to a 10-year electoral cycle, give or take, which now begins to make an eventual Conservative defeat — if not this time then next — look inevitable. That can have a corrosive effect on morale.

Conservatives: The Opportunity

Harper is capable of big policy turnabouts under pressure; witness the near-death experience of late 2008, followed by the expansive 2009 budget, which was Liberal in all but name.

More than any other single issue, Harper has been dogged by his party’s lagging on the environment; years and years go by, and still nothing that looks like a serious effort to reduce carbon emissions. A continental deal with U.S President Barack Obama’s administration on carbon pricing would do much to offset that reputation, and blunt an important weapon of the opposition.

Twitter.com/mdentandt

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/as-mps-return-to-work-heres-what-to-watch-for/feed0House of CommonsmikedentandtLiberal Leader Justin Trudeau speaks to supporters in a file photo. NDP leader Tom Mulcair in a file photo. Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaks in a file photo. Fisher: Opposition leaders need to speak up about extending Canada’s military role in Iraqhttp://o.canada.com/news/fisher-opposition-leaders-need-to-speak-up-about-extending-canadas-military-role-in-iraq
http://o.canada.com/news/fisher-opposition-leaders-need-to-speak-up-about-extending-canadas-military-role-in-iraq#commentsFri, 26 Dec 2014 22:48:08 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=568178]]>Should Canada continue to participate in the U.S.-led fight against Islamic State when the current mission ends this spring?

It is an important question that has received scant attention recently from Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and the New Democrats’ Tom Mulcair. Yet almost everyone in the military assumes that Stephen Harper’s government soon will announce that when the more than 600 Canadians now serving as trainers in Iraq or with the RCAF in neighbouring Kuwait rotate home they will be replaced by others.

In fact, over the past few days several soldiers have told me that they or some of their colleagues already have received notices telling them to be prepared to deploy to the Middle East by late April. Such notices are almost always followed by formal orders confirming their deployment. So, it is highly likely Ottawa will keep troops in the Middle East for the foreseeable future.

Largely because of hand-wringing by U.S. President Barack Obama, the coalition strategy for how to defeat Islamic State remains a muddle of half-measures. This is because of a universal reluctance by coalition partners to commit the commandos, infantry, armoured and artillery units required to defeat the radicals in western and northwestern Iraq.

Even absent a robust intervention on the ground, the coalition’s air campaign and the training of Iraqi soldiers and their Kurdish peshmerga allies has undoubtedly helped achieve some progress against Islamic State in cities such as Mosul and where its forces have tried to lay siege to cities such as Irbil, Kirkuk and Baghdad. To be truly effective both coalition missions must be extended. They would also be more effective if they were to become adjuncts to a land offensive.

It is the third time that Ottawa has been at war in a decade. It can be reasonably argued that Islamic State is the most vile enemy Canada has fought in many decades. But the conflict over Iraq has been relatively small news back home compared with the attention given to the Canadian Forces’ part in toppling Moammar Gadhafi in Libya or the war that Canada waged against al-Qaida and the Taliban in southern Afghanistan.

It is not as if little is happening. Several hundred thousand Iraqi Christians from Mosul and nearby areas are celebrating Christmas on the run because they refused to convert to Islam and therefore faced being decapitated as apostates. Perhaps most repellent of all have been recent revelations about Islamic State’s grotesque declarations regarding the place of captured women in their self-styled caliphate.

Islamic State has circulated videos showing its fighters joking about women they have taken as prizes of war. It published a chilling 27-point manifesto last month that provided a detailed religious justification for “masters” to “buy, sell, gift” and pass on captured female “slaves” to their male heirs as well as explaining jihadists’ right to have sex with female slaves including pre-pubescent girls.

Because they constantly champion human rights and women’s rights, it has been stunning to find Trudeau’s Liberals and Mulcair’s New Democrats reluctant to have Canada try to do something to defeat Islamic State. Sidestepping the reality that Canada has already done as much or more than any other western nation to assist those displaced by the fighting in Iraq and Syria, they have offered bromides about the need to help refugees. And, in the case of Trudeau, made ill-considered comments about the need to study the root causes of Islamic fundamentalism, as if the West, and by association, Canada, is somehow to blame for the choreographed decapitation of western journalists and aid workers and the machine-gunning deaths of scores of prisoners.

After a brief parliamentary debate in early October, the Liberals and New Democrats opposed the modest number of Canadian military trainers the Harper government dispatched to Iraq and the six-pack of CF-18 Hornets and the reconnaissance and support aircraft that are now bombing Islamic State from bases in Kuwait.

Whatever misgivings they may have about other aspects of how Harper governs, polls indicated that Canadians strongly support his government’s decision to send troops to bomb Islamic State and train Iraqi ground forces. Nevertheless, as the Liberal and New Democrat leaders enter an election year they have continued to insist it is in Canada’s best interests to offer Band-Aids and Pablum to ease suffering rather than a more robust response to Islamic State’s bestial provocations.

Canadians need to know if the recent murders of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent and Cpl. Nathan Cirillo as well as Islamic State’s joyous slaughter of what it considers to be infidels and its depraved behaviour toward female captives have changed Trudeau and Mulcair’s minds about the Harper government’s military campaign, which is currently slated to end in April. And whether they now embrace the highly likely six-month extension of that mission, which will have Canadian troops still in Iraq and Kuwait until after the federal election.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/fisher-opposition-leaders-need-to-speak-up-about-extending-canadas-military-role-in-iraq/feed2Canada Islamic StatefisherrmatthewTriangulating Thomas Mulcair between Jack Layton and Justin Trudeauhttp://o.canada.com/news/national/triangulating-thomas-mulcair-between-jack-layton-and-justin-trudeau
http://o.canada.com/news/national/triangulating-thomas-mulcair-between-jack-layton-and-justin-trudeau#commentsMon, 01 Dec 2014 19:10:06 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=554197]]>In March of 2012, when former Quebec provincial Liberal minister Thomas Mulcair trounced old-guard favourite Brian Topp to take the helm of Canada’s NDP, he was heralded as their Great Hope for Forming Government.

Thomas Mulcair

Mulcair, it was held by his supporters, would complete the task begun by the late Jack Layton, of moving this one-time fringe party to the heart of the mainstream. And only “The Grizzly,” it was believed, had the grit and gravitas to fend off the scurrilous personal attacks of the Conservatives.

But it hasn’t turned out that way. For two long years Liberal crown prince Justin Trudeau has stolen Mulcair’s thunder. The NDP remain mired in third place in the polls, while the Grits cling stubbornly to the lead.

HOW HE CAN BE LOVED LIKE JACK

Jack Latyon

Mulcair has faced three major obstacles in his effort to hang onto Layton’s astonishing 2011 gains in Quebec, which won the party 59 seats there, while at the same time laying a foundation for further gains in the rest of Canada.First, the sheer weight of Quebec seats had made the NDP, de facto, a Quebec regional party. That crimps its style when it comes to reflecting the aspirations of Albertans or Ontarians. Mulcair’s pledge to scrap the Clarity Act, the Chretien-era law that sets out rules under which Quebec might leave Confederation, is taken as given in Quebec; it’s a deal breaker anywhere west of the Ottawa River. The NDP’s ingrained, perceived hostility to resource development, which Mulcair has done far too little to offset, likewise has currency in left-leaning Quebec. Not so in centrist Ontario, and much less in conservative Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Jack Mulcair

Second, Trudeau himself has proved enduringly popular. Try as the NDP might to frame the dauphin as a feckless ding-a-ling with Hollywood looks and a brain to match, Canadians by and large seem to prefer Trudeau’s “sunny ways” to Mulcair’s “competent, responsible public administrator” shtick. It doesn’t help the NDP leader that he sometimes looks and sounds older than his 60 years, whereas Trudeau is a youthful 42. Third, the New Democrat leader has been held back by his party which, despite a calculated push towards the centre in the Jack Layton era, is still perceived as Canada’s party of the Left. Canadians seem quite comfortable with the NDP as an idea-incubator and social-policy advocate; less so with the prospect of it crafting federal budgets and setting foreign and security policy.

HOW HE CAN BE LUSTED AFTER LIKE JUSTIN

Justin Trudeau

There are three clear moves open to the NDP leader, each geared towards seizing the centre of the political spectrum from the Liberals, and upstaging Trudeau as the principal alternative to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Thus far, Mulcair has shown no inclination to pursue any of them.First, he could get out and about, a great deal more than he has thus far, in Ontario. The province is home to nearly 40 per cent of Canada’s population and a corresponding number of the seats in the House of Commons. Because the Tories have scuppered themselves in Quebec, Ontario is the keystone in their majority; it rests on a coalition of rural and suburban Ontarians and Prairie conservatives. Mulcair has little hope of a breakthrough on the Prairies; his best (read only) prospect of a national breakthrough is in Ontario. But that will never happen unless he gets better known in communities such as Barrie, Stratford, Kingston, Mississauga, North Bay and Ajax.

Thomas Trudeau

Second, he could produce a written, rigorously costed fiscal plan that plays not to his left-leaning base, but to swing voters with economically conservative leanings. Such a plan, perhaps stitched together by a trio of respected economists, containing a clear balanced-budget promise and reinforcing the NDP’s pledge to hold the line on income taxes, could go some way toward reassuring voters who are kicking the tires, but still uneasy about the party’s economics.Third, Mulcair could bring forward an industrial plan for Ontario pegged to his pre-existing pledges to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, and his long-standing support for TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline. Ontario has been hammered for a decade by the loss of heavy manufacturing and the union jobs that go with it; a credible, ambitious plan to bring new industry, and new jobs in refining, resource processing and technology, would find a receptive audience.

Michael Zehaf Bibeau exited the vehicle located in the right of this screenshot taken from a surveillance camera. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO – RCMP)

A photo of Michael Zehaf Bibeau from a different angle as he runs towards Parliament Hill. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO – RCMP)

Michael Zehaf Bibeau is shown in this Twitter photo posted by @ArmedResearch, which said in a Tweet it came from an Islamic State media account. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO)

A police officer directs traffic near the National War Memorial in Ottawa, where a soldier was gunned down Wednesday. A woman walks by with a shopping cart as Ottawa tries to return to normal. (Peter McCabe/Getty Images)

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and wife Laureen on their way to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa on Thursday, a day after a gunman killed Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at “point blank” range before running into Parliament and being shot and killed himself. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

Evidence markers dot the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the National War Memorial in Ottawa on Thursday, a day after a gunman turned the nation’s capital into an armed camp. (Adrian Wyld/ Canadian Press)

People watch from a distance as Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his wife Laureen lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the National War Memorial. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

A sniper stands guard over the nation’s capital — increased security will be part of the “new normal” in Ottawa in the coming days. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

More signs of tight security: A pack of heavily armed Ottawa Police stand guard in front of the National War Memorial one day after a lone gunman killed Cpl. Nathan Cirillo of the Canadian Army Reserves. (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

The Canadian flag was also at half staff on top of the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill in Ottawa to honour the fallen soldier. (Adrian Wyld/ Canadian Press)

Inside, a bullet hole on the door frame to the Library of Parliament is a harsh reminder of how much worse Wednesday could have been (Adrian Wyld/ Canadian Press)

House of Commons Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers carries the mace into the chamber on Thursday, where party leaders hailed him as a hero for shooting the gunman who invaded Centre Block on Wednesday. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper thanks Vickers after making a statement in the House of Commons. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

Everyone wanted to thank the man who saved them: NDP MP Rathika Sitsabaiesan hugs Vickers as other MPs line up to pay their respects. Vickers was among those who opened fire Wednesday on the gunman who stormed Parliament Hill. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/the-morning-after-ottawa-in-pictures/feed1Harper, MulcairashleycsanadyMichael Zehaf Bibeau is shown carrying a gun while running towards Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2014, in a still taken from video surveillance in this handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - RCMPMichael Zehaf Bibeau is shown carrying a gun while running towards Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2014, in a still taken from video surveillance in this handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - RCMPMichael Zehaf Bibeau is shown carrying a gun while running towards Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2014, in a still taken from video surveillance in this handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - RCMPMichael Zehaf Bibeau is shown in this Twitter photo posted by @ArmedResearch, which said in a Tweet it came from an Islamic State media account. RCMP said at a news conference Thursday, Oct. 23 that police are attempting to identify the source of the photo and don???t know who took it. RCMP also said Zehaf Bibeau, killed after a deadly shooting at the National War Memorial and on Parliament Hill, was not on the RCMP's watch list of potential high-risk travellers. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HOA police officer directs traffic near the National War Memorial in Ottawa, Canada on October 22, 2014. Gunfire echoed through the Gothic halls of the Canadian parliament Wednesday as police shot dead a gunman who had killed a soldier guarding a nearby war memorial before storming the building. Police said an investigation was continuing, but did not confirm earlier reports that more gunmen were involved. Heavily armed officers backed by armored vehicles sealed off the building. There was no immediate word on the gunman's motivation, but the attack came a day after an alleged Islamist drove over and killed another soldier in what authorities branded a terrorist attack. (Peter McCabe/Getty Images)Prime Minister Stephen Harper and wife Laureen visit the Tomb of the Unknown soldier in Ottawa on Thursday Oct. 23, 2014. A gunman turned the nation's capital into an armed camp Wednesday after he fatally shot an honour guard at "point-blank" range at the National War Memorial before setting his sights on Parliament Hill. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)Prime Minister Stephen Harper and wife Laureen walk away after leaving flowers on the perimeter of the crime scene at the National Memorial in Ottawa on Thursday Oct. 23, 2014. A gunman turned the nation's capital into an armed camp Wednesday after he fatally shot an honour guard at "point-blank" range at the National War Memorial before setting his sights on Parliament Hill. (Adrian Wyld/ Canadian Press) Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his wife Laureen walk away after leaving flowers on the perimeter of the National Memorial in Ottawa on Thursday Oct. 23, 2014. Michael Zehaf Bibeau fatally shot reservist Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial before setting his sights on Parliament Hill. Bibeau was killed just feet from where hundreds of MPs were meeting for their weekly caucus meetings. (Adrian Wyld/Associated Press)An Ottawa police officer lays flowers and pays his respects for Cpl. Nathan Cirillo of the Canadian Army Reserves at the National War Memorial, who was killed yesterday while standing guard at the memorial, on October 23, 2014 in Ottawa, Canada. After killing Cirillo the gunman stormed the main parliament building, terrorizing the public and politicians, before he was shot dead. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)Flowers are left in memorial for Cpl. Nathan Cirillo of the Canadian Army Reserves, who was killed yesterday while standing guard in front of the National War Memorial by a lone gunman, on October 23, 2014 in Ottawa, Canada. After killing Cirillo the gunman stormed the main parliament building, terrorizing the public and politicians, before he was shot dead. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)Flowers are left in memorial for Cpl. Nathan Cirillo of the Canadian Army Reserves, who was killed yesterday while standing guard in front of the National War Memorial by a lone gunman, on October 23, 2014 in Ottawa, Canada. After killing Cirillo the gunman stormed the main parliament building, terrorizing the public and politicians, before he was shot dead. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)Evidence markers dot the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the National War Memorial in Ottawa on Thursday Oct. 23, 2014. A gunman turned the nation's capital into an armed camp Wednesday after he fatally shot an honour guard at "point-blank" range at the National War Memorial before setting his sights on Parliament Hill. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian WyldPeople watch from a distance as Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his wife Laureen lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the National War Memorial in Ottawa, on Thursday Oct. 23, 2014. A gunman turned the nation's capital into an armed camp Wednesday after he fatally shot an honour guard at "point-blank" range at the National War Memorial before setting his sights on Parliament Hill. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)Security watches from a rooftop as Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his wife Laureen lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the National War Memorial in Ottawa, on Thursday Oct. 23, 2014. A gunman turned the nation's capital into an armed camp Wednesday after he fatally shot an honour guard at "point-blank" range at the National War Memorial before setting his sights on Parliament Hill. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)Members of the Ottawa Police stand guard in front of the National War Memorial one day after a lone gunman killed Cpl. Nathan Cirillo of the Canadian Army Reserves, who was standing guard at the memorial, on October 23, 2014 in Ottawa, Canada. After killing Cirillo the gunman stormed the main parliament building, terrorizing the public and politicians, before he was shot dead. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)Parliament staffers queue to enter Centre Block on Parliament Hill in the House of Commons on Thursday October 23, 2014 in Ottawa. (Sean Kilpatrick/ Canadian Press)Flags fly at half mast on Parliament hill and on the Peace Tower in Ottawa on Thursday October 23, 2014. A gunman turned the nation's capital into an armed camp Wednesday after he fatally shot an honour guard at "point-blank" range at the National War Memorial before setting his sights on Parliament Hill. (Sean Kilpatric/ Canadian Press)The Canadian flag flies at half mast on top of the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Thursday Oct. 23, 2014. A gunman turned the nation's capital into an armed camp Wednesday after he fatally shot an honour guard at "point-blank" range at the National War Memorial before setting his sights on Parliament Hill. (Adrian Wyld/ Canadian Press) A bullet hole on the door frame to the Parliamentary Library is pictured in Ottawa, on Thursday Oct. 23, 2014. A gunman turned the nation's capital into an armed camp Wednesday after he fatally shot an honour guard at "point-blank" range at the National War Memorial before setting his sights on Parliament Hill. (Adrian Wyld/ Canadian Press) House of Commons Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers carries the mace during the Speakers Parade on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2014. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaks with the House of Commons Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers after making a statement in the House of Commons Thursday October 23, 2014 in Ottawa. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)NDP MP Rathika Sitsabaiesan hugs Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers as other MPs line up to pay their respects following speeches by leaders in the House of Commons Thursday October 23, 2014 in Ottawa. Vickers was among those who opened fire Wednesday on the gunman who stormed Parliament Hill. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)NDP leader Tom Mulcair speaks with the House of Commons Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers after making a statement in the House of CommonsThursday October 23, 2014 in Ottawa. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)Prime Minister Stephen Harper hugs the Leader of the Opposition Tom Mulcair in the House of Commons on Thursday October 23, 2014 in Ottawa. (Sean Kilpatrick/ Canadian Press) Prime Minister Stephen Harper hugs the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada Justin Trudeau in the House of Commons on Thursday October 23, 2014 in Ottawa. The House of Commons is back in action, kicked off by an exhilarating show of support for the sergeant-at-arms of the House of Commons, who was among those who opened fire Wednesday on the gunman who stormed Parliament Hill. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)Coyne: Canada’s politicians try to put politics aside after shooting – but can’t (video)http://o.canada.com/news/national/coyne-canadas-politicians-try-to-put-politics-aside-after-shooting-but-cant-video
http://o.canada.com/news/national/coyne-canadas-politicians-try-to-put-politics-aside-after-shooting-but-cant-video#respondThu, 23 Oct 2014 22:12:08 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=533968]]>Columnist Andrew Coyne says politicians usually follow a script after a tragedy like we saw this week. And, Stephen Harper, Justin Trudeau, Thomas Mulcair and Elizabeth May all did a good job – but there was a little more there than meets the eye.]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/coyne-canadas-politicians-try-to-put-politics-aside-after-shooting-but-cant-video/feed0Ottawa Shooting 20141023andrewcoyneFisher: Canada reluctantly joins the motorcycle gang of nationshttp://o.canada.com/news/fisher-canada-reluctantly-joins-the-motorcycle-gang-of-nations
http://o.canada.com/news/fisher-canada-reluctantly-joins-the-motorcycle-gang-of-nations#commentsThu, 23 Oct 2014 18:14:17 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=533374]]>It is a horrible way to wake a country from a deep slumber, but the murder this week of two Canadian soldiers in separate attacks in Quebec and Ottawa, and in particular Wednesday’s assault on Parliament, may finally bring home the reality that Canada is no longer what folk singer Nancy White once called a nation of Boy Scouts in the motorcycle gang of nations.

Serious questions must and will be asked about how a gunman was able Wednesday to penetrate deep inside Parliament. And what security officials had been doing — or not doing — about the 90 Canadian citizens who have been on a terrorist watch list.

Still, why have most Canadians not been far more alert to the threats that the country faced than they were?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has reminded the public that there are dozens, if not more, young Canadians with extremist tendencies. The RCMP and CSIS have both warned for years that there were terrorist cells operating in the country. More recently there has been evidence that more than 100 homegrown terrorists had gone to or wanted to go to the Middle East to fight for Islamic State.

The self-proclaimed Islamic State has created slick videos to appeal to young Canadians. They show the Rockies and kids playing shinny along with commentary that suggests that life as a jihadist would be more fun and more meaningful than anything that Canada could offer.

Islamic State apparently understands what western security experts have long known. New converts to Islam, as the two Canadians linked to the attacks may have been, often make the most zealous jihadists.

Yet in remarks that they may wish they could now somehow modify, NDP leader Tom Mulcair and Liberal leader Justin Trudeau both recently accused the prime minister of overreacting to or exaggerating the menace that Canada faces.

Canadians have been living in a comfortable vacuum of their own making, blind and deaf to the reality that Canada has been at risk of a terrorist attack since before 9/11. I may be very attuned to this because I have spent much of the past few decades in hotspots in the Middle East and South Asia where I spend a lot of time scrutinizing the faces, body language and dress of people I meet in chance encounters. But figuring out that they might be in peril, too, has not been particularly difficult for any Canadian, especially lately.

Islamic State has exhorted its followers to specifically attack Canadians. Similar outrages to those that shook Ottawa this week have taken place many times recently in several countries that are close allies.

Herewith, is a greatly abbreviated list of those actions:

– A few weeks ago Belgian police arrested a group that was said to be planning an attack on the European Union’s main headquarters in Brussels;

– Five months ago a gunman shot and killed four people in an attack on a Jewish museum in the Belgian capital;

– A soldier with the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers was run over by two men and then hacked to death by two jihadists last year in London;

– Hundreds of other Islamic radicals, including young women whose brains have been so addled that they wish to take terrorists as their husbands, have travelled from the West to Syria to join Islamic State.

Citing several terror plots hatched on home soil, aimed at Australian military personnel, as well as the large number of Australian citizens who have gone to fight for Islamic State in Syria, Prime Minister Tony Abbott raised the country’s terrorist alert level to high last month and moved Thursday to tighten security around Parliament House.

“For quite some time, these murderous, brutal terrorist organizations have been speaking about attacks on those sorts of institutions and in those sorts of countries, including Canada, Australia, the United States, any country that opposes their ideology, any country that embraces freedom and tolerance,” Bishop told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation before giving another Australian television network an interview in which she said she had called Canada’s foreign minister, John Baird, on Thursday and he had told her that “he’d been about 50 feet (15m) away from the shooting of the gunman.”

The security pendulum in Canada had already begun to swing the other way before Wednesday’s outrage in the centre of Ottawa.

Twelve minutes before Michael Zehaf-Bibeau shot dead Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, I was metres away from the National War Memorial at the Langevin Building, dropping off some documents at the Prime Minister’s Office. I was mildly annoyed because the security official on the Intercom would not let me in the door although I had been expected. I was told to wait on the street for someone to come to me. I took this as a new security precaution that had been put in place since Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent was murdered on Monday in St. Jean-sur-Richelieu.

Like every Canadian, I can remember a simpler, more carefree time. When I was a kid, my father was a Member of Parliament. At times back then it felt as if I had the run of the West Block and the Centre Block. Those precincts were guarded by war vets who were often alone, always unarmed and seldom appeared to be particularly assiduous about their duties.

I remember passing then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau on a dirt road once as he was out for a drive in a hip red convertible with his three young sons standing up in the back seat of the car. There was no security detail to speak of. For some reason all four Trudeaus had wide grins and waved like crazy at me.

Canada’s innocence has been battered during the intervening year as major terrorist attacks rent London, New York, Washington, Madrid, Mumbai and Nairobi. The hermetic bubble that Canadians apparently believed that they lived in may have ended for good on Wednesday. With Islamic State already vowing on Twitter that Canada will face more attacks, far less friendly times lie ahead as Canada reluctantly joins the motorcycle gang of nations.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/fisher-canada-reluctantly-joins-the-motorcycle-gang-of-nations/feed1Centre-Block-on-Parliament-Hill-in-Ottawa-is-surrounded-by-police-vehicles-on-on.jpgfisherrmatthewDen Tandt: Speaker Scheer, assert yourselfhttp://o.canada.com/news/national/den-tandt-speaker-scheer-assert-yourself
http://o.canada.com/news/national/den-tandt-speaker-scheer-assert-yourself#commentsThu, 25 Sep 2014 19:43:33 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=519487]]>If any comfort at all can be drawn from the banquet of idiocy that Question Period has become on Speaker Andrew Scheer’s watch, it is this: By granting discourtesy, disrespect and outright stupidity free rein, he allows the people who pay for it all to see, and to judge.

At specific issue, now as in the past, are the antics of one Paul Calandra, age 44, Conservative Member of Parliament for Oak Ridges-Markham, and parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Those are Calandra’s official titles.

Unofficially, Calandra is an enforcer — placed on point in QP each day, at the direction of his boss, to foil and blunt the opposition’s attacks. In the Commons context, he’s a bodyguard. In that sense, Calandra is merely a cog in a bigger wheel, which is as old as the British parliament and has countless precedents in Canadian legislatures.

House Speaker Andrew Scheer in a file photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

This delicate system only hangs together, however, if the enforcer treads a fine line of goading and annoying and ducking, while avoiding grotesque rudeness, flagrant stupidity and open contempt for the very notion of holding a question period, which de facto expresses contempt for democracy itself.

Here then, is Opposition Leader Tom Mulcair’s opening question in the House Tuesday, from Hansard: “Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has failed to answer clear questions about his ill-defined military deployment in Iraq. Yesterday Conservatives refused, once again, to answer in this House, but the member for Selkirk-Interlake stated on CPAC that the mission will end on October 4. Will the Conservative government confirm that the 30-day Canadian commitment in Iraq will indeed end on October 4?”

Calandra’s response, on the PM’s behalf: “Mr. Speaker, there is a great deal of confusion with respect to the NDP position on Israel. I wonder if the Leader of the Opposition could confirm for me whether Alex Anderson, who identifies himself as a fundraiser at the New Democratic Party, speaks for the NDP when he says ‘eff’ the IDF and all who support them, and that he is sick and tired of the media BS trying to sell lies and hide an effing genocide. Does Alex Anderson speak for the NDP when he says these shameful things?”

Mulcair, rather patiently I thought, repeated his question. Calandra repeated his unrelated, expletive-laced declaration – whereupon Mulcair asked the Speaker to intervene. But rather than do so, let alone direct Calandra to answer, Scheer allowed him to repeat his non sequitur a third time. That prompted Mulcair to question the Speaker’s impartiality. For this temerity, the opposition leader lost the remainder of his questions.

Wednesday, Scheer sought to justify these actions, citing several precedents. His authority does not extend to judging whether a question has been answered, he said. He can determine when an MP can speak, whether his or her language is parliamentary or constitutes an unacceptable personal attack, but it’s not his job to judge whether any given answer is, in fact, an answer. Semantic content is, apparently, irrelevant. “That is why it is called question period, not answer period,” Scheer said, quoting his predecessor, Peter Milliken.

Which, if you think about it, is astonishing balderdash.

First, by this logic, it now becomes acceptable for a government MP to say anything at all in Question Period. Calandra could, when confronted with an opposition question, begin chanting in ancient Greek. He could speak in Sanskrit, or in tongues; he could say “Lalalalalalalala” while plugging his ears, the way kids do. He could read his grocery list. He could recite the ageless “To be or not to be” soliloquy from Hamlet.

Second, Scheer is underplaying his own importance. In the British parliament, Speakers rear up on their hind legs, bellow and holler when they feel the need. Consider this video, which captures a particularly fine performance by Speaker John Bercow. Within the Westminster tradition, precisely because so much rests on convention, the Speaker has broad leeway to use moral suasion — that is to say, to bellow and holler — when he or she feels it necessary to impose order. The trick is that they have to want to.

Andrew Scheer became Speaker of the House of Commons at age 32 – making him the youngest person to serve in this role in our history. For that reason, and because he came to office as a Tory, Scheer bears the special burden of having to occasionally demonstrate that he can master the bonfire of egos that is the House of Commons, especially on the governing side, to establish his impartiality, and frankly, his mojo.

Egregious buffoonery such as Calandra displayed Tuesday – his forays were notably absent in Question Period Wednesday and Thursday — will ultimately blow back on the government, if only because it was so over the top. But that isn’t the point. The Speaker’s job, in Question Period, is to preside. He can’t do that if he allows inanity to prevail utterly, making a mockery of the very institution in which he sits.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/den-tandt-speaker-scheer-assert-yourself/feed4ScheermikedentandtHouse Speaker Andrew Scheer in a file photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian WyldThis is why Canadians hate question periodhttp://o.canada.com/news/national/paul-calandra-tom-mulcair-iraq-deployment-518416
http://o.canada.com/news/national/paul-calandra-tom-mulcair-iraq-deployment-518416#commentsTue, 23 Sep 2014 21:06:38 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=518416]]>Question period is supposed to be the heart of Canadian democracy, where the government is held to account by the opposition and forced to explain and justify its policies. That is, of course, not how it actually goes down, but even by the standards of Canadians’ already diminished expectations of what passes for debate in the House of Commons, Tuesday’s back-and-forth on Canada’s involvement in Iraq has to mark some kind of new low.

NDP leader Tom Mulcair asked what seemed a straightforward question of the government about the length of the mission to fight ISIS militants in the Middle East.

“Will the Conservative government confirm that the 30-day Canadian commitment in Iraq will indeed end on Oct. 4?” he asked.

In response, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister Paul Calandra rose and delivered what has to be the most bizarre non-sequitur uttered in the House of Commons in many years.

“Mr. Speaker, there’s a great deal of confusion with respect to the NDP position on Israel,” he said, apparently feeling no shame.

Calandra then repeated some statements allegedly made by an NDP fundraiser who was critical of the Israeli “genocide” in Gaza and demanded to know if Mulcair and the NDP shared the same views.

Except, that’s not really how this is supposed to work. The opposition gets to ask the questions and the government has to answer. Successive governments have degraded this process to the point of turning the whole exercise into a painful recitation of talking points, but at least there’s usually a pretense of addressing the issue at hand.

Mulcair tried two more times to get a straight answer from the government benches but was repeatedly met with absurd responses about Israel, to the point that the NDP leader even questioned the speaker’s “neutrality in this house” for allowing those answers to stand unchallenged.

"No explicit rules," but "several types of responses may be appropriate. Ministers may: answer the question; defer their answer; 1/2

Calandra’s disgraceful act on Tuesday is well in keeping with his previous performances in the House of Commons, particularly at the height of the Duffy Affair last year. Calandra, by the way, has expressed ambitions of one day becoming prime minister, so we all have that to look forward to as a country.

NDP leader Thomas Mulcair has made much of his party’s plans to raise the federal minimum wage to $15, create a national child care strategy based on Quebec’s now-floundering $7-a-day model and bring provincial health transfers back up to six per cent per year.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Joe Oliver have kicked off the run to 2015 with a promise to reduce Employment Insurance payroll taxes on small businesses to spur employment.

Mulcair, in particular, has earned much ink from the Ottawa press gallery over intention to use policy to push back the Liberals who, though they hold only 37 seats and are the third party in the House, are leading in the polls.

But despite that talk, the New Democrats haven’t released costing details or plans to fund their policy proposals. And Goodale suggested both other parties are only now pumping potential platform planks because the negative and personal attacks on Trudeau haven’t helped them in the polls.

And though the Grits aren’t rushing to release their costed platform, they’re also carefully preparing for the impending scrutiny.

It’s not just trial balloons, but also pruning ideas from last February’s policy convention, weekly Monday caucus meetings about policy in addition to the regular Wednesday gatherings, and expert councils on foreign affairs and the economy. The party knows its leader requires strong policy cred to turn the polls into seats, it’s just not yet ready to tip its hand.

Goodale hinted where the party is headed and said the Liberal platform, whenever it lands, will include a definition of the middle class — something Trudeau has been repeatedly challenged over.

“There will be a very practical, real-life definition of how Canadians themselves describe themselves in that category. It will be clear from the nature of the proposals that are being made,” Goodale said.

And, he said the party will make clear where it stands on carbon pricing and resource development. Both are issues Trudeau has been challenged on or being too vague about.

On marijuana, Goodale said Liberals will make it clear to Canadians how, exactly, they would go about legalizing pot.

“We will obviously, building on what the leader has said, move forward on that one to have a regime of taxation and regulation,” Goodale said. “Canadians will know exactly where we stand when they go to vote.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/liberals-wont-counter-ndp-and-conservative-attacks-just-yet/feed4TrudeauashleycsanadyLiberal party deputy leader Ralph Goodale Case not closed on missing and murdered aboriginal womenhttp://o.canada.com/news/national/aboriginal-women-over-represented-as-homicide-victims-and-in-missing-persons-cases-report-finds
http://o.canada.com/news/national/aboriginal-women-over-represented-as-homicide-victims-and-in-missing-persons-cases-report-finds#commentsFri, 16 May 2014 20:29:28 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=447621]]>All RCMP divisions in Canada have been ordered to review their unsolved cases of missing and murdered aboriginal women to look for new and unexplored leads, and have six months to report on their progress, officials said Friday.

The announcement coincided with the release of a long-anticipated report that found aboriginal women were significantly overrepresented as victims of homicide and in missing-persons cases.

Even though aboriginal women make up four per cent of the population, they represent 16 per cent of all murdered females between 1980 and 2012 and 11 per cent of all missing females, the report found.

“We remain committed to resolving all outstanding cases and seeking justice for families and friends of aboriginal women who have disappeared or who have been murdered,” Deputy Commissioner Janice Armstrong said at a news conference in Winnipeg. “And we remain committed to reducing the violence against aboriginal women.”

RCMP Supt. Tyler Bates, director of the National Aboriginal Policing and Crime Prevention Services, talks about the National Operational Review on Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women at a press conference in Winnipeg, on May 16, 2014. JOHN WOODS/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Armstrong later told Postmedia News that commanding officers in each division have been directed to review outstanding case files to ensure all investigative avenues have been followed, including DNA testing, and to make sure investigators have reached out to family members, especially in older cases.

“When files are many years old there’s a tendency to lose contact,” she said.

The bulk of money allocated for family violence prevention will also be re-directed to high-risk communities so police can work with non-profit groups to shepherd community meetings and develop community-safety plans, Armstrong said.

Closely tied to prevention is the need to address “vulnerability factors,” such as unemployment and substance abuse, said Supt. Tyler Bates, RCMP director of aboriginal policing.

“It’s by no means, on our part, to accord any type of blame to the victim with respect to discussing these vulnerability factors, but the reality is that there are difficult social and economic circumstances that need to be considered,” he said.

The commitments did not stop calls for a public inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women.

“A national public inquiry is the only way to seek answers about the hundreds of indigenous women who have been murdered or gone missing across the country, and to begin to bring closure and healing to their families and communities,” NDP Leader Tom Mulcair said in a statement.

“The government continues to go on with excuses as if it is doing something. This is an ongoing national crisis. … When will the government call a public inquiry?” Liberal opposition critic Wayne Easter said in the House.

Earlier in the week, the National Women’s Association of Canada reiterated its call for an inquiry following the release of a report by James Anaya, the United Nations special rapporteur on indigenous rights. He reported that he had heard “consistent” and “insistent” calls for an inquiry that would allow victims’ families to be heard and deepen understanding of the problems.

But the Conservative government insisted Friday that an inquiry was unnecessary.

“We must continue to take concrete action now, not just continue to study the issue,” Justice Minister Peter MacKay said in a statement. “Information gathering and discussions may help, but police investigations, new tools and techniques, as well as preventative, pre-emptive programming, are what deliver tangible results.”

The government, for instance, has allocated new money for shelters for women, children and families living on reserves, justice officials said.

Women hold their signs as they protest against the First Nations Education Act in Ottawa on May 14, 2014. ADRIAN WYLD/THE CANADIAN PRESS

The RCMP said it worked with Statistics Canada and almost 300 police agencies to create “the most comprehensive” account of missing and murdered aboriginal women to date.

The report said that 1,017 aboriginal females were victims of homicide since 1980 and another 164 aboriginal women were missing — much higher than previous estimates.

Of the homicides, 120 remain unsolved, the report said. Of the missing-person cases, foul play was suspected in 105 of them.

The report noted that the ability to solve homicides did not vary between aboriginal victims and non-aboriginal victims. Police solved close to 90 per cent of all female homicides.

However, homicides involving prostitutes were solved at lower rates — 60 per cent for aboriginal women in the sex trade and 65 per cent for non-aboriginal women.

Broken down by province, B.C. had 36 unsolved aboriginal female homicides and 40 missing aboriginal women — more than any province in either category — followed by Alberta with 28 unsolved homicides and 19 missing women, and Manitoba with 20 unsolved homicides and 12 missing women.

Armstrong said senior Mounties will travel to B.C. next week to discuss these findings and other “local questions.”

The report noted that aboriginal female homicide victims were more likely to be unemployed than non-aboriginal victims and were more likely to have consumed alcohol or drugs prior to their deaths.

Also, the most common cause of death among aboriginal female homicide victims was physical beating (32 per cent), almost twice as often as non-aboriginal victims (17 per cent). Non-aboriginal victims were more likely to be stabbed or shot.

Homicides against aboriginal women were most often committed by acquaintances (30 per cent) or spouses (29 per cent). In the cases where aboriginal female victims were related to their killers, there was a known history of violence 62 per cent of the time.

dquan(at)postmedia.com

Twitter.com/dougquan

——————————————————————————————————-

Key findings of the RCMP’s report on missing and murdered aboriginal women:

— Women represented 32 per cent of all murder victims in the study. Of the 6,551 victims, 16 per cent were aboriginal.

—As homicide rates for non-aboriginal women dropped over time, the percentage of aboriginal victims rose as a consequence, from 8 per cent in 1984 to 23 per cent in 2012.

—The solve rate for both aboriginal and non-aboriginal women was roughly the same, just under 90 per cent.

—Aboriginal women are three times more likely to be a victim of violence than non-aboriginal women.

— The proportion of aboriginal female homicide victims varied across the country over the 32-year study period. In Saskatchewan, aboriginal women were 55 per cent of all female murder victims, compared to six per cent in Ontario.

— Compiled by Lauren Strapagiel

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/aboriginal-women-over-represented-as-homicide-victims-and-in-missing-persons-cases-report-finds/feed1RCMP Review on Murdered and Missing WomendougpostmediaMissing and murdered aboriginal womenAboriginal protestsShifting ground clears paths for NDP — but can they step up?http://o.canada.com/news/shifting-ground-clears-paths-for-ndp-but-can-they-step-up
http://o.canada.com/news/shifting-ground-clears-paths-for-ndp-but-can-they-step-up#respondTue, 29 Apr 2014 20:07:58 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=437288]]>“This is our moment to build the Canada of our dreams,” a beaming Tom Mulcair told a mob of hooting, hollering New Democrat MPs this week, as they returned to Parliament Hill, still riding the adrenalin rush of their victory over the governing Conservatives on Bill C-23, which they’d dubbed the “unfair elections act.”

Mulcair was hailed by his caucus as a conquering hero. And it would be difficult to argue, in fairness, that he doesn’t deserve at least some of the accolades for forcing amendments to C-23, which, though not perfection, vastly improve the bill. With a new CROP poll out Tuesday showing the NDP now lead the Liberals by a hair in Quebec, at 33-per-cent support compared with 32 per cent, Mulcair is having a good month. In the ROC another pair of new polls, by Angus Reid and Ipsos, show the NDP still running a distant third, but with Liberal support slipping — suggesting, possibly, that Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s yearlong honeymoon is waning. Indeed, this has the look of an opportunity for Mulcair — a moment in which he could bring all his dogged work in the Senate spending scandal to fruition, and establish his party as a government in waiting, as he has long claimed it was, to little avail.

But can the NDP leader capitalize on the opportunity?

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair asks a question during question period in the House of Commons. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

There is no question but that, this spring, the strategic ground has shifted in a way that clears some paths for him that previously were muddy or obscured. The most important of these was the Quebec election. Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard’s majority victory, and the reasons for it — a powerful, popular renunciation of the very notion of resurrecting the separatist project — neutralized one of the most potent arguments against these New Democrats in the ROC, and indeed for many within Quebec. That is, that they would rewrite the federal Clarity Act to enshrine 50 per cent, plus one, as the threshold in a referendum that would initiate negotiations on separation. Of course, the NDP’s Sherbrooke Declaration remains a part of its platform; but the collapse of Quebec separatism makes it moot, the political equivalent of an appendix.

Next: The Supreme Court’s Senate ruling last Friday was, at first blush, nearly as much of a setback for Mulcair as it was for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Again at a stroke, the SCC gave the lie to any notion that the Senate can simply be made to vanish, as the NDP’s catchy slogan, “roll up the red carpet,” clearly implied. Mulcair has since insisted his party understood all along they’d need to secure provincial buy-in. But unanimous buy-in, as the court has ruled? It’s a practical impossibility.

But here too, the court’s very clear ruling arguably moves this entire field of political combat off centre of the board, at least for 2015 — in a sense levelling an area in which the Liberals, until now, have held a clear advantage. Trudeau’s disavowal of his party’s 32 senators last January was always intended to be a first step, to be followed eventually by deeper reforms in senators’ selection that would not require constitutional change. It is now unclear whether any reform at all in the selection process, beyond consultations of the most informal kind, would be legal without approval of at least seven provinces, constituting half the population.

Then, there’s the Keystone XL file, which Mulcair has consistently gotten wrong since he became NDP leader in March 2012. Again, somewhat paradoxically, he may benefit from developments beyond his sphere of influence; the pipeline is off the government’s agenda, at least until U.S. midterm elections are past and probably until Barack Obama is no longer president. As recent reporting by Bloomberg News has made clear, the lion’s share of blame for that rests with Obama and with Harper himself. But the shelving of the discussion effectively eclipses another area in which Mulcair had strategically hobbled himself, particularly in Ontario. The new thrust of the federal and Alberta government’s efforts, the Edmonton Journal reported Tuesday, is, guess what? Canadian pipeline projects, in other words an eastern-directed line, which the New Democrats have long advocated.

All of which leaves just one important battleground in which Mulcair clearly is still at a major strategic disadvantage to both the Trudeau Liberals and the Harper Conservatives — and that is his party’s chronic, historic woolliness on the economy, running the gamut from its dislike of nuclear power, to its attitude toward corporations (they’re evil, whereas small businesses are sainted) to its reflexive hostility to resource industries, especially the oilpatch.

New Democrats, quite suddenly, have an opportunity to demonstrate credible support for TransCanada Pipeline’s Energy East proposal, and for an industrial strategy that bolsters oilpatch-related industries in eastern Canada, and in the process win themselves some economic street cred. Will they step up?

“If the provinces believe, as I do, there should be reform, they should bring forward those reforms forthwith. If they don’t believe that, they should bring forward amendments to abolish the Senate,” Harper told the Commons Tuesday.

Harper made the challenge days after saying his government was giving up on Senate reform given the restrictive path the Supreme Court of Canada had set for making changes. It also came after NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair charged that Harper was making an about-face on his position to bring about major changes to the upper chamber.

The roadmap the top court laid out last Friday requires the agreement of the seven provinces with half the country’s population — the “7/50” rule — to establish term limits for senators or create a national framework for consultative elections. The court said unanimous consent from all provinces was needed to abolish the Senate.

That decision eliminated Harper’s hope for an easy path to amend the scandal-plagued chamber.

Harper said again Tuesday that there was no national interest in engaging in constitutional negotiations.

“The Supreme Court has ruled in its wisdom that the federal government can neither abolish the Senate, nor can the federal government actually propose reforms, significant reforms, to the Senate,” Harper said. “That is all now, according to the Supreme Court of Canada, within the purview of the provinces. So my position … has not changed.”

Provinces have given no indication that they’re ready to run with Senate reform. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, one of the most outspoken premiers on Senate reform, told reporters last week there was no consensus nor interest in going ahead with Senate reform.

“Not very long ago in the federation … the country would have been very close to having met a 7/50 threshold,” Wall said Friday. “It certainly was a national issue. It remains an issue that’s current, but it’s not a top priority.”

The Supreme Court decision was not surprising to observers inside and outside of the Senate, many of whom expected the court to find the government’s proposed Senate Reform Act unconstitutional. That has left senators to pick up the pieces of Senate reform, debating changes to the upper chamber that can be accomplished without touching the Constitution.

“We have to say, all right, it’s now up to us,” Senate Liberal leader James Cowan told the Citizen after the court’s decision. “We have a responsibility to make our institution the best it can be.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper responds to a question during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, April 29, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Some senators have already said they’ll take action, though at a personal level. Conservative senators Vern White and Linda Frum told the Citizen they don’t plan to serve until the age of 75, even though that is the current allowed retirement age. Rather, they indicated they are prepared to step aside at the right time in their term so new blood can join the upper chamber.

“People should not stay for a period in excess of eight to 12 years,” said Frum, who was appointed in 2009 and can legally serve until 2038. “For any organization, that is an appropriate amount of time in which you can make a contribution (and) you can stay relevant.”

White said this week that he committed to serve nine years in the Senate when he entered the red chamber in 2012, although he could legally serve 22 years. “I’m not suggesting that Vern White at 60 … is no longer bringing value to the Senate,” he said. “I’m suggesting others would bring new ideas.”

His demand on Wednesday followed a story in the Citizen about government records that appear to show Privy Council Office workers deleting an email account they were explicitly ordered to retain.

A March 22, 2013 email outlined how PCO staff were to suspend the accounts of departing personnel and track them on a central spreadsheet. Yet a March 28 service ticket appears to show the deletion of an account.

The records were released to the Citizen after the paper made an access to information request for documents regarding the emails of Benjamin Perrin, a former legal adviser in the Prime Minister’s Office.

According to RCMP court documents, Perrin was allegedly involved in negotiations to secure Duffy’s agreement to a plan to cover repayment of the senator’s questionable housing claims, which totalled more than $90,000.

The PCO said Tuesday that no email deletions took place and that Perrin’s emails were retained because of a lawsuit unrelated to the Duffy affair. On Wednesday, PCO spokesman Raymond Rivet declined to comment further on what was meant in the March 28, 2013 IT service ticket that said “accounts have been deleted,” or why staff wouldn’t have heeded the earlier March 22 order.

“They (PCO) were told straight up, you’re not allowed to erase these things, and then they proceeded to erase them,” Mulcair told reporters Wednesday. “There’s no question that there has to be an investigation.”

The expenses and the backroom deal that saw Nigel Wright, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff, allegedly cover Duffy’s expenses out of his personal funds are the subject of an RCMP fraud and breach of trust investigation. Perrin’s emails are evidence in the investigation.

Mulcair said the internal PCO documents raise more questions about what happened to Perrin’s emails, which PCO thought were erased for months before realizing there were still existing messages. It handed some emails over to the RCMP in December.

More emails were handed over to the RCMP in January. According to court documents obtained by the CBC, the RCMP received a hard drive with what appeared to be deleted data retrieved from PCO systems.

Mulcair made his comments Wednesday on the steps of the Langevin Block — home to the Prime Minister’s Office — while levelling allegations of criminal wrongdoing against Harper’s office. (Nothing in the documents released to the Citizen suggests illegal acts.)

“Mr. Mulcair has levelled serious allegations against PMO staff without a shred of evidence; his suggestion that anyone in the PMO illegally destroyed emails is unsubstantiated and completely false,” said Harper spokesman Jason MacDonald.

“The Prime Minister instructed that staff provide the RCMP with whatever assistance they require as part of their investigation. The RCMP has been provided whatever assistance and documents they required for their investigation.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/mulcair-demands-probe-of-disappearing-emails-in-senate-affair/feed00.000000 0.0000000.0000000.000000MulcairjordanpresIt’s up to our politicians to explain how that secret $90,000 payment can be legalhttp://o.canada.com/news/its-up-to-our-politicians-to-explain-how-that-secret-90000-payment-can-be-legal
http://o.canada.com/news/its-up-to-our-politicians-to-explain-how-that-secret-90000-payment-can-be-legal#respondFri, 18 Apr 2014 21:16:43 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=431320]]>OTTAWA — When the RCMP announced on Tuesday that it was not going to charge Nigel Wright in connection with his secret $90,000 payment to Mike Duffy, I felt happy for him, because he seems in many ways an admirable man, whatever mistakes he may have made in this affair, and he appears to have suffered.

But I don’t know Wright. I met him only once, in March 2012, at the going away party for the good-humoured Angelo Persichilli, who worked as director of communications to Stephen Harper.

I shook Wright’s hand, introduced myself, and joked that we would miss getting leaks from Persichilli. Wright laughed politely, because we both knew Persichilli wasn’t leaking me anything.

Wright made a point of not talking to journalists, even those friendliest to the government.

One of the hallmarks of the prime minister Wright served is his secretiveness.

Politics is by its nature secretive, but Harper has taken this secrecy further than his predecessors. The people closest to him — Ray Novak and Jenni Byrne — do not talk to reporters. He doesn’t talk to reporters. Wright didn’t talk to reporters.

The people they pay to talk to reporters don’t know what’s going on.

As a result, the press gallery really has no idea what’s happening in the Langevin building, and we must behave like Kremlinologists, seizing on stray scraps of information, much the way CIA analysts once examined Politburo group photos for clues about who was enjoying Leonid Brezhnev’s favour.

The RCMP investigation into Wright’s payment to Duffy — with its dramatic court documents — pierced the PMO’s secrecy in a way that was difficult for the Harper government but good for our democracy. Democracy is only meaningful to the extent that we know what the government is doing.

Thanks to the RCMP, we know that senior officials in our government were conspiring to cover up tens of thousands of dollars in (seemingly) improper payments to senators. The internal emails and interview transcripts published by the RCMP show Wright, Duffy and a host of lawyers and senators doing all kinds of things they would never do if they didn’t think they could keep it secret.

It looks like poetic justice. Harper’s secretive approach to politics created an environment in which his servants did things that they couldn’t explain once they were exposed.

To avoid the short-term pain caused by revealing improper payments, Harper’s people created a much bigger problem, and gave us all a good long look at the sleazy way the game is played in the big leagues.

This has been fun for those watching at a distance, but unpleasant for everyone involved, including the prime minister, who was forced to stand in the House woodenly repeating unconvincing talking points to the NDP’s prosecutorial Thomas Mulcair.

The government has not yet shaken off the miasma of sleaze, and it is starting to look like it never will, although the news that Wright won’t be charged must give Harper hope that there is a path through this mess.

Nigel Wright, former chief of staff for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, is shown appearing as a witness at the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Nov. 2, 2010. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

You don’t have to sport tinfoil headgear to note how convenient this is for the government. The Tories have exerted their control over the RCMP in alarming ways, and Harper has repeatedly shown that it is better to be his friend than his enemy.

Consider that the last commissioner of the RCMP, William Elliott, is living, all expenses paid, in an $8,000-a-month Manhattan luxury apartment, courtesy of our tax dollars. And consider that the previous commissioner, Giuliano Zaccardelli, interfered in the 2006 election by announcing the Mounties were investigating Ralph Goodale for something he didn’t do.

And if you closely consider the political position of senior cops, you can see why they might like to investigate politicians but not charge them.

It is wise to be suspicious of the Royal Conservative Mounted Police, but we have to assume that in this case the Mounties have made the right call for the right reason: that there was no reasonable prospect of convicting Wright. The RCMP consulted with provincial Crown prosecutors in the same office that pressed charges against former Ottawa mayor Larry O’Brien, who we must believe are independent.

And if the Mounties were in the tank for the Tories, would they have pushed this investigation as hard as they have, causing such misery for their political masters?

The way our legal system is set up, we will never know why the Mounties decided not to proceed unless it comes out in court if the force proceeds with charges against Mike Duffy, which is expected in the coming weeks. But it’s up to politicians, not police or judges, to tell us how it is that the prime minister’s chief of staff is able to make a secret payment to a sitting legislator without facing criminal prosecution.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/its-up-to-our-politicians-to-explain-how-that-secret-90000-payment-can-be-legal/feed0Nigel WrightstphnmaherNigel WrightDamn the torpedoes, it’s full speed ahead for Conservative party on its revised elections acthttp://o.canada.com/news/damn-the-torpedoes-its-full-speed-ahead-for-conservative-party-on-its-revised-elections-act
http://o.canada.com/news/damn-the-torpedoes-its-full-speed-ahead-for-conservative-party-on-its-revised-elections-act#respondWed, 09 Apr 2014 00:10:31 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=424670]]>On Tuesday, as critics of the Conservatives’ election act lined up in two committee rooms to issue stark warnings about the law, Pierre Poilievre, the minister for democratic reform, signalled that the government intends to pass it more or less as is.

In a long, tough opening statement, Poilievre attacked Marc Mayrand, the chief electoral officer, and vigorously refuted the main critiques of his act.

Poilievre’s speech seems to set the terms for the rest of the legislative process, which should end with a largely unchanged bill becoming law by June.

The fiction is that the parliamentary committee will, on its own, decide how to amend the bill, but everybody knows that the Conservatives on the committee will only make the changes that the Prime Minister’s Office wants them to make.

Since Poilievre tabled the bill in February, it has received universally bad reviews from academics, interest groups for aboriginals, students, seniors and current and former federal and provincial election officials.

They say it will make it harder for many people to vote and that it will make it harder for independent election officials to crack down on wrongdoing.

Poilievre says the Commons committee will consider amendments, and there have been rumblings of discontent within the Conservative caucus, so until Tuesday it seemed the government might listen to the editorial writers and other worthies who have called for the bill to be either killed or massively amended.

But on Tuesday, Poilievre gave a strongly worded speech that makes it seem unlikely that the government is considering backing down.

The Tories now have a good sense of what critics think, who they are and how much they can affect public opinion.

Polls show that, to this point, people who know about the elections act mostly don’t like it, but not many Canadians are paying attention.

One thing that may change that is the entry into the debate last week, of Sheila Fraser, the widely respected former auditor general who caused such headaches for the Liberals with her report on the sponsorship scandal.

In interviews, Fraser called the bill an “attack on our democracy,” complaining that it undermines the office of the chief electoral officer, who, as an officer of Parliament, must be independent and free to speak.

Before Fraser testified, Poilievre signalled that he doesn’t much care what she thinks, attacking Mayrand as a power-drunk bureaucrat.

“The CEO of Elections Canada has indicated his opposition to (the bill),” said Poilievre. “Let me just say that I am at peace with that. The reality is, regardless of amendments and improvements that the bill would potentially have included, the CEO will not ultimately support it. His recommendations really boil down to three broad requirements for him. He wants more power, a bigger budget and less accountability.”

Later, Poilievre said that Mayrand, in his fight for power, is “making some incredible claims and inventing some novel legal principles to do it.”

Former auditor general Sheila Fraser has called a Conservative bill revising the Elections Act an “attack on our democracy,” complaining that it undermines the office of the chief electoral officer, who, as an officer of Parliament, must be independent. Handout.

One of Mayrand’s complaints about the bill is that it does nothing to prevent parties from misusing personal information controlled by political parties. As-yet unknown persons used information from the Conservative database to misdirect voters in the 2011 election, and party members recently complained that Conservative MP Eve Adams gained access to their personal information.

Elections Canada has asked for the power to oversee the use of personal information.

Poilievre rejected that on Tuesday, hinting, oddly, of dark outcomes if Elections Canada could have power over party databases: “It would be a breach of the voter’s privacy if the government agency was able to have unrestricted access to the party database that contains information that the voter has only decided to confide in that party and not in a government agency.”

When it was her turn to testify, Fraser complained about Poilievre’s attacks on Mayrand.

“I find that very unfortunate and actually very troubling that an officer of Parliament is being treated that way,” she said.

In question period, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair asked Prime Minister Stephen Harper about Fraser, who Harper praised back when she helped bring down the Liberals.

Harper, like Poilievre, did not say her name, but said the government would ensure that Elections Canada “like all institutions of government, is held accountable for its actions.”

For good or ill, Harper appears determined to damn the torpedoes, get this law passed and bring Elections Canada under greater government control.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/damn-the-torpedoes-its-full-speed-ahead-for-conservative-party-on-its-revised-elections-act/feed0House of CommonsstphnmaherSheila FraserMulcair forced before Commons committee to defend ‘satellite’ officeshttp://o.canada.com/news/national/mulcair-forced-before-commons-committee-to-defend-satellite-offices
http://o.canada.com/news/national/mulcair-forced-before-commons-committee-to-defend-satellite-offices#respondThu, 27 Mar 2014 21:13:33 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=418250]]>OTTAWA — NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair will face an unexpected grilling from MPs after being ordered to testify before a parliamentary committee about his party’s “outreach” offices around the country, which are partially funded through the House of Commons budget.

The Tories used a procedural trick Thursday to force Mulcair before a committee sometime between now and May 16, catching the NDP napping when the Official Opposition didn’t have enough MPs in the House of Commons to block the Conservative mov

When Mulcair sits down before the committee, in a rare appearance by a party leader, he will answer accusations that his party has misused parliamentary funds for partisan purposes, either through the satellite offices or through taxpayer-funded mailouts the NDP has sent around the country.

As first reported by the Ottawa Citizen, one of those NDP’s outreach offices is in Montreal and one is in Quebec City. The province of Quebec was key to the NDP’s rise to Official Opposition status in 2011. Another outreach office is in Saskatchewan, a province where the NDP has historic roots, but not a single current MP.

“There’s a distinction and it has to be made on (work you do on) behalf of the constituents you represent … and electioneering,” said Conservative MP Blake Richards, who first proposed calling Mulcair to testify. “They don’t seem to care or understand that there’s a difference.”

Richards said Mulcair has to answer for what appears to be “a clear pattern of abuses of taxpayers money.” Richards said the NDP must repay any misused funds.

Then party-leader Jack Layton agreed to open the Montreal office in 2011 after the so-called “Orange Wave” elected 59 New Democrats in Quebec. It was the first time the NDP had to deal with so many MPs, many of them rookies, in a province that had largely shut them out in previous elections.

The NDP has said the offices fall within the House of Commons spending rules. NDP House leader Peter Julian said the extension of Mulcair’s leadership office to ministerial offices allows MPs to hear from Canadians beyond Ottawa, and beyond the boundaries of their own ridings.

“We have to make sure that we’re out there,” Julian said. “This is not an issue and it’s been something that Conservatives have been desperately trying to make an issue.”

The NDP told the procedure and house affairs committee Thursday that the party wants Prime Minister Stephen Harper to testify about the use of parliamentary funds in his office that it says blurs the lines with party activities, such as tweets from his prime ministerial account that link to Conservative party pages.

The Conservative-dominated committee is unlikely to support this suggestion.

“That the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs be instructed to consider the matter of accusations of the Official Opposition’s improper use of House of Commons resources for partisan purposes; and that the Leader of the Opposition be ordered to appear as a witness at a televised meeting of the committee to be held no later than May 16, 2014.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/mulcair-forced-before-commons-committee-to-defend-satellite-offices/feed00.000000 0.0000000.0000000.000000MulcairjordanpresTax apologists hard-pressed to claim we’re under-taxedhttp://o.canada.com/news/tax-apologists-hard-pressed-to-claim-were-under-taxed
http://o.canada.com/news/tax-apologists-hard-pressed-to-claim-were-under-taxed#commentsWed, 26 Mar 2014 22:47:37 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=417986]]>For fans of the expansionary state, these are the end times. Once, long ago, a candidate for public office could boast of his plans to “tax and tax, and spend and spend.” But now? It’s like no one dares to dream any more.

Oh sure, the spend and spend part is still there: on sewers, on transit, on pensions, you name it. It’s the tax and tax part that’s fallen out of fashion. Long the preserve of politicians on the right, opposition to raising taxes is today near universal, even on the left.

Justin Trudeau disavows tax increases of any kind — corporate, personal, value-added — claiming there’s “no reason” to do so. Thomas Mulcair has been even more definitive, ruling out any increase in personal income taxes, in the kind of categorical language (“period, full stop”) he used to reserve for ruling out coalitions. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, who had excited left-wing hopes with her talk of tapping unspecified new “revenue tools” to fund her transit ambitions, has since retreated. Even Olivia Chow — Olivia Chow! — says she’d only increase Toronto’s property taxes “in line with” inflation. Which hardly even counts, really.

All of which has the left in something of a quandary. To repair the damage after such a prolonged period of austerity — in some estimates, it has been going on since the 1970s — will take more than a one-time burst of spending. Rather, what is required is a permanent increase in the size of the state — to be financed by an equally permanent increase in taxation. But that will remain off-limits, politically, so long as public attitudes remain implacably hostile to the idea.

So a number of left-leaning commentators have set out to rehabilitate the notion of raising taxes as something that can be discussed in polite company. Leading the way is Alex Himelfarb, the former clerk of the privy council, who together with his son, Jordan, opinion editor at the Toronto Star, has published a book of essays under the provocative title Tax Is Not a Four-Letter Word.

Writing in the current issue of The Walrus magazine (“Happy returns: Why you should look forward to tax time”) Timothy Taylor makes the case for “putting taxes back on the agenda” as part of a broader effort to “reconstruct the common good, such that citizens feel a genuine obligation to it.” The air is thick with quotes from Oliver Wendell Holmes (“taxes are the price we pay for civilization”) and complaints at the indignity of being treated “as taxpayers, instead of citizens.”

“The Canadian tax conversation has become dangerously distorted,” the Himelfarbs argue. “Any reasonable discussion of taxes must take into account the highly valued public services they buy. But in Canada, and throughout much of the Anglosphere, these inextricably linked concepts — taxes and public services — have somehow become divorced.”

“Some 35 years after Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher first began demonizing taxes,” the Star’s Thomas Walkom observes, “politicians are still running scared.” At least the right believes its own rhetoric. But “parties on the centre-left take these positions in the face of evidence provided by any number of experts who point out that public services can work only if the public funds them.”

Well, now. It’s certainly possible people are such simpletons as not to realize that spending must be paid for in taxes. Perhaps they are unaware of the indispensable role of public services in their lives. Maybe years of right-wing indoctrination have made them hostile to the very notion of paying taxes.

But there’s also another possible explanation. Maybe people are quite conscious of the importance of public services, but suspect that much of what they pay in taxes is spent to rather less valuable effect. Perhaps they are not entirely immune to arguments for increasing spending for particular needs, but believe this could be funded by cutting back in other areas.

The underlying premise of the New Taxographers, that public services have been starved for revenues, devastated by what the Himelfarbs refer to as “decades of cuts,” is hard to square with the actual record. Over the past five years the federal government spent an average of roughly $7,250 per citizen, in 2013 dollars, on services to the public. That’s more than it has ever spent in our history, and it’s not even close: At its previous peak, in the early 1990s, it was barely scraping above $6,000. Provincial spending is up even more.

And while taxes are lower than they were at their recent peaks, they’re a long way from starvation levels. Federally, revenues have declined since 2001 as a percentage of GDP — meaning they have not increased as fast as the economy — but have more than kept pace with increases in spending. The same is true at the provincial level. An editorial in the Star last week, arguing the case for higher taxes, complained that “Ontario’s tax levels are at historic lows.” But there’s simply no possible construction of the facts that can make this true, even by the per-cent-of-GDP yardstick.

In the current fiscal year the province will collect revenues equal to about 13.6 per cent of GDP. Previous governments could only dream of such abundance. In the early 1990s, under the NDP, own-source revenues averaged 12.6 per cent of GDP; under the tax-cutting Harris Tories, they averaged 13.4 per cent. Meanwhile federal transfers add another 3.3 per cent of GDP to provincial coffers. A decade ago they were half that much.

If, looking at all this, the public declines to cough up more, it may not be because they view taxes as a four-letter word. They may simply want more evidence they are getting value for their existing contributions. If that means “citizens” are thinking like “taxpayers,” maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

With Quebec at the midpoint of a fiery election campaign, talk of sovereignty, referenda, passports and borders has taken centre stage. How worried should you be? Here’s a layman’s guide:

PQ leader Pauline Marois responds to a question following the leaders’ debate Thursday, Thursday, March 20, 2014 in Montreal. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson

Q. If I’m from outside Quebec. Should I care about this election?

A. Quebec elections always matter to the entire country, given that the Parti Quebecois could be returned as the province’s government. If it were to win a majority, talk of a referendum on leaving Canada could quickly heat up, despite PQ leader Pauline Marois’s reassuring comments on the campaign trail that she’d do a lot of consulting before taking such a step. So yes, you should follow some of the issues.

“It’s the burden of being Canadian,” said David Schneiderman, professor of law at the University of Toronto. “Some people in the mid-90s were actively contemplating (a country without Quebec) in the rest of Canada as a good thing. We might have a conversation like that again. You never know.”

Q. I thought sovereignty wasn’t supposed to be the big issue in this election. Why is everyone talking about?

A. In 2012, the PQ, historically a sovereignty party, regained power in Quebec for the first time since losing the 2003 election to Jean Charest’s Liberals. While this immediately sparked new discussion around sovereignty, Marois had hoped much of this campaign would focus not on independence directly, but on her government’s Charter of Values, which, among other things, would prohibit the wearing of identifiable religious attire while working in the public sector. She is on record as saying that her party would present Quebec with a “white paper” to gauge interest on a possible split from Canada.

But her attempt to deal with Quebec’s future indirectly, through the values charter, was abruptly derailed when the PQ unveiled star candidate Pierre Karl Péladeau, who said he wanted to “make Quebec a country.” Hard to avoid the topic after that fist-pumping proclamation from a charismatic candidate.

Q. Does placing the topic at the centre of the election help the PQ or the Liberals?

A. The polls suggest that the PQ hurts itself when it take an aggressive approach to sovereignty. A CROP poll published in Montreal’s La Presse on March 18 said 67 per cent of Quebec residents don’t want a third referendum.

A poll released by Léger-Le Devoir March 16 showed that, were a referendum to be held at the moment of the survey, 59 per cent of people would vote “No” and 41 per cent would vote “Yes.” Support does not seem to be very high for separation at the moment.

“There has always been, over the last 40 years, between 30 and 40 per cent of Quebecers who are in favour of sovereignty,” said Michel Ducharme, associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia. “The numbers have been quite steady in this regard.”

Q.But let’s say Marois won, and support for a referendum went up for some reason. The sovereignty movement almost won the 1995 referendum. What’s the process? Last time, no one seemed to know.

A. “These kinds of situations can be difficult to deal with in strictly legal terms,” said Carissima Mathen, associate professor of law at the University of Ottawa. “It’s a political issue that will be very dependent on the specific factors in play.”

The biggest difference between any future referendum and the 1995 one is the federal Clarity Act. The Act, passed into law in 2000, says a referendum question will have to be clear and that the House of Commons will have to determine if it was endorsed with a clear majority (unfortunately, the term “clear majority” is open to interpretation). Additionally, any province seceding from Canada requires that the Canadian Constitution be changed. This is why the Clarity Act is important: unless its conditions are met by Quebec, other Canadians would be unlikely to go for changing the Constitution.

But there’s no consensus on whether the provinces would have to unanimously agree on any constitutional changes, or if changes could simply go through with the approval of seven provinces, representing 50 per cent or more of the population, which is sometimes a standard for constitutional change.

“There’s some disagreement about that,” said Schneiderman. “Unanimity is probably what would be expected in this kind of event.”

Meanwhile, both Alberta and British Columbia would have to undergo a referendum of their own: it’s the law in both provinces that the population must approve constitutional change.

Q.Can Quebec ignore the Constitution?

A. If the constitutional route doesn’t work out, Quebec could attempt to appeal to international law to support its leaving Canada. It could try to get other countries to recognize it officially.

But Schneiderman noted that this route is usually reserved for the secession of oppressed or unfairly treated populations. If Canada has negotiated in good faith, Quebec likely won’t succeed in taking this approach.

All of this gets even further confused by Bill 99 in Quebec. It’s provincial legislation that states that only Quebec government can rule on its population’s democratic will. That bill is currently the subject of a court challenge.

Conclusion? “We’d totally be in uncharted territory, for us,” said Mathen. “But the idea is that we have a tradition of peaceful transitions … and that would be the expectation, I think, of everyone involved.”

Q. We’re getting ahead of ourselves, but let’s say all this legal stuff is settled. What are some of the practical hurdles for an independent Quebec?

A. Start with the economy. Would Canada allow Quebec to use the national currency (indeed, could it stop this)? How could Quebec pay down its provincial debt — $175.5 billion in provincial debt and $121.2 billion in Quebec’s share of the national debt, according to the Fraser Institute?

Would aboriginal communities try to leave Quebec, invoking their constitutional treaty rights to remain a part of Canada.? What would then happen to Quebec’s territory?

There’s also the issue of whether Quebec and Canada would share open borders. Would Canadians and Quebecers alike be free to pass through unimpeded? Or would Canada require a Quebec-issued passport to allow access to the country? Marois has hinted that citizens of either country would be free to come and go as they pleased, although Quebec-issued passports would still be required.

“For the last forty years, people have discussed how to win a referendum. There has been almost no discussion about what would happen the next day,” Ducharme added, saying that the lack of discussion is because sovereignty-oriented leaders “don’t agree with themselves” beyond their belief that Quebec should be independent.

Q. Would all Anglophones leave the province? Would there be an influx of people to the West?

A. Since the whole point of sovereignty is to maintain the francophone culture, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see some anglophones marginalized and fed up with the situation. But the discussion of a referendum isn’t exactly new, so Ducharme doesn’t believe there would be a big difference.

“My guess is that the English-speaking people who wanted to leave Quebec have already done it,” he said.

Q.Will this ever end, regardless of election outcome?

A. Unlikely. There will always be those who hope to make Quebec its own country. “I know that people want an end,” said Schneiderman, “but it’s naïve to think there would be … it will be a perpetual thing that we will have to work through. It’s never going to go away, this kind of threat.”

Still, there are so many stumbling blocks and hurdles to separatism that it doesn’t make much sense to get worried just now. “I would not lose sleep over it,” said Ducharme, “and I don’t.”

Q. Who should I keep an eye on?

A.Pauline Marois. The leader of the PQ, if she survived this election, would spearhead any move to separate.

Pierre Karl Péladeau. The former CEO of Quebecor Inc. and now a PQ candidate, is a polarizing figure, who could galvanize both sovereignty supporters and opponents.

Philippe Couillard. Should the Liberal leader emerge victorious from this election, referendum fears would fade – this time.

Thomas Mulcair. If any federal politician seems likely to play a meaningful role in the sovereignty debate, it’s the federal NDP leader. Mulcair has been a cabinet minister in Quebec, with credibility among its residents. His NDP affiliation can’t hurt, either, given the party’s surge in the province during the 2011 federal elections.

Stintz is one of several declared candidates ahead of the Oct. 27 mayoral election in Toronto. The city councillor and former chair of the Toronto Transit Commission is a former ally of Mayor Rob Ford but decided to run against him following his troubled year in office.

Trudeau isn’t the first federal political leader to make an impromptu appearance in other people’s photos. In 2012, Prime Minister Stephen Harper surprised a wedding party in Ottawa when he rolled up in his blue windbreaker to congratulate the happy couple.

Harper is pictured with a wedding party in the Ottawa region in October 2012. (LauraKellyPhotography.ca)

Your move, Thomas Mulcair.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/justin-trudeau-photobombs-toronto-mayoral-candidate/feed0Justin Trudeau photobombishmaeldaroHarper is pictured with the wedding party. NDP to launch outpost in Saskatchewan, with taxpayers funding the staffhttp://o.canada.com/news/national/ndp-to-launch-outpost-in-saskatchewan-with-taxpayers-funding-the-staff
http://o.canada.com/news/national/ndp-to-launch-outpost-in-saskatchewan-with-taxpayers-funding-the-staff#commentsThu, 20 Mar 2014 18:49:11 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=414682]]>OTTAWA – The federal NDP is opening a branch office of leader Thomas Mulcair’s office in Saskatchewan, with the House of Commons paying for the cost of an “outreach officer” in Saskatoon despite criticism that the arrangement may violate MP spending rules.

The move to open a Saskatchewan branch comes after reports that the NDP has been running two similar “satellites” of Mulcair’s Ottawa office, also funded in large part by taxpayers, despite a prohibition on using House of Commons money for political party activities.

The NDP is using its party website to advertise the full-time position based in Saskatchewan but the job is funded through the Office of the Leader of the Official Opposition and the NDP Research Office in Ottawa. The job pays $48,929 annually and is covered by the collective agreement between the NDP and its House of Commons staff.

Until Thursday, the ad said the winning job applicant would, “Assist Members of Parliament with outreach to their constituents and in organizing outreach opportunities in Saskatchewan.”

The NDP, however, has neither MPs nor constituents in Saskatchewan and hasn’t since 2004.

That, say the Liberals, puts the lie to the notion that Mulcair’s satellite offices are doing work for MPs.

“It is not a believable scenario that Mr. Mulcair needs the leader’s office and the research office, supporting his functions in Ottawa, based in Saskatoon,” said Liberal deputy leader Ralph Goodale, the province’s only opposition MP.

“Unless you really believe in the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny, it would appear the purpose of these people is building the political base of the NDP in Saskatchewan.”

It would appear the purpose of these people is building the political base of the NDP in Saskatchewan

Earlier this week, the NDP claimed that a dozen staff in its Montreal office and two others in Quebec City can be paid by the House of Commons because they are doing work for the 57 NDP MPs in Quebec.

House of Commons rules say MP staff, including those in leaders’ offices or research offices, can perform only “parliamentary functions” on behalf of MPs and may not do party work.

Asked why it wanted to fill the Saskatchewan position with a House of Commons staffer, the NDP said Thursday that the original wording of the ad was a mistake.

“This is being done very publicly, and we use a generic job description template,” said party spokesperson Valérie Dufour in an email. “That error in the posting was not cut before it went out and it is now being corrected.”

But Dufour said the party has a legitimate need to put a House of Commons-paid employee in Saskatchewan.

“We have to be in touch with all Canadians, because their concerns and issues are interlinked are not limited to the confines of riding boundaries,” she wrote in an email. “We still have to talk to people from outside our ridings. Issues in Saskatchewan, like grain backlog for instance, (have) an impact across the country.”

We have to be in touch with all Canadians

The NDP has also been advertising for a national organizer based in Saskatchewan to “assist New Democrat Electoral District Associations in pre-election organizing including the development of pre-election and election campaign plans in Electoral Districts across SK.” That job, however, appears to be funded through the party’s headquarters.

The change in riding boundaries for the 2015 election has stoked the NDP’s hopes of once again winning seats in Saskatchewan, the spiritual home of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation that became today’s NDP.

The redistribution of the boundaries last year created five exclusively urban seats in Saskatoon and Regina, instead of the mixed urban-rural ridings that have helped the Conservatives maintain near-total hegemony over the province.

NDP and Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair talks to reporters after attending his caucus meeting in on Parliament in Ottawa, Wednesday February 26, 2014. (CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand)

The prospect of winning seats, says Goodale, is clearly the motivation for Mulcair to set up a political operation in Saskatchewan. “It is obviously a national political embarrassment that they have been wiped out in Saskatchewan for so long,” he said.

“If they are going to remedy that problem, it should be with the funds and resources of the New Democratic Party of Canada, not the funds and resources of the Parliament of Canada.”

Earlier this week, the Liberals wrote to House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer and asked that, in his capacity as chair of the House of Commons Board of Internal Economy, he refer the Montreal and Quebec offices to the board for an investigation.

Goodale said the party will again write to Scheer to ask the board to look into the Saskatoon position.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/ndp-to-launch-outpost-in-saskatchewan-with-taxpayers-funding-the-staff/feed1ndpjobglenmcgregorNDP and Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair talks to reporters after attending his caucus meeting in on Parliament in Ottawa, Wednesday February 26, 2014. (CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand)NDP keeping a taxpayer-funded office in Quebec Cityhttp://o.canada.com/news/ndp-keeping-a-taxpayer-funded-office-in-quebec-city
http://o.canada.com/news/ndp-keeping-a-taxpayer-funded-office-in-quebec-city#commentsTue, 18 Mar 2014 18:54:41 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=413232]]>In addition to a branch office in Montreal, the federal New Democrats have been operating an affiliate office in Quebec City, staffed by employees who are also paid for by the House of Commons.

The Citizen reported Monday that about a dozen NDP staff have been working out of rented office space in downtown Montreal, in what the party calls a “satellite” of Thomas Mulcair’s Office of the Leader of the Opposition in Ottawa.

The Liberals say it appears the office may have breached House of Commons rules that prohibit House of Commons staff from doing party work or elections organizing. But the New Democrats say that staff in the Montreal office, who are paid by the party’s research office in Ottawa and contributions from the operating budgets of the province’s 57 NDP MPs, do only parliamentary work on behalf of the MPs.

The Montreal office is not the only Quebec branch that taxpayers have been funding. The NDP confirmed Tuesday that is also has a two-member bureau in Quebec City. A press secretary and outreach officer are working from the office of Quebec NPD MP Raymond Côté.

The NDP say that, like the Montreal staff, the two Quebec City employees do not do party work.

NDP leader Thomas Mulcair asks a question during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday, February 27, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

“These members of our personnel exclusively perform parliamentary tasks while being decentralized,” said spokesperson Valérie Dufour.

Dufour said the arrangement was discussed extensively and approved by House of Commons Pay and Benefits and Financial Services and Dufour said she believes that the House legal services were consulted on the matter.

Dufour shot back at criticism from the Liberals, who said running the office was hypocritical of the NDP, who had complained in 2012 about then-Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe paying for a party official in Montreal from Duceppe’s office budget.

“If the Liberal Party spent half the time fighting Stephen Harper’s policies as they do smearing the NDP, perhaps Canada would be a better place,” Dufour shot back.

On Tuesday, however, the Liberals wrote to House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer to request that he ask the Board of Internal Economy to open an investigation of the NDP’s Montreal office.

Liberal MP Scott Andrews wrote that the Montreal staff cited in the Citizen report do not appear to be doing constituent work.

“We believe the activity described above dangerously blurs the lines between parliamentary work and political party activity, and potentially violates the Members By-Laws,” he wrote.

As many as a dozen staff members paid by the House of Commons through MPs’ office budgets or the NDP Research Office are posted in the office in rented space above a furniture store on Boulevard Saint-Laurent, just south of Mount Royal.

The office gives Mulcair a unique beachhead in the city and province crucial to his party as it prepares to fight off a resurgent Liberal Party in the 2015 election — with the House of Commons paying for most of it.

But the party says the “satellite” of the Office of the Leader of the Opposition, set up in 2011, does only parliamentary work on behalf of NDP MPs. It operates within House of Commons rules that prevent Hill staff from performing purely partisan political work on the taxpayer’s dime, the party contends.

The Liberals say its hypocritical to defend the office since the NDP called for an inquiry in 2012 into a Bloc Québécois official in Montreal who was paid by the House of Commons. They want the House’s internal spending watchdog, the Board of Internal Economy, to take a closer look.

“If parliamentary staff, paid by the taxpayer, are working 250 kilometres away from Parliament Hill in an office that has an NDP logo on it, and it is paid for by the party, to me it’s pretty hard to make a case they are working on public business,” said Liberal House Leader Dominic LeBlanc.

“It seems to me that, on the face of it, it looks abusive.”

LeBlanc said if the NDP is using the office for any political operations, it could also run afoul of Elections Canada rules, as money contributed to it through MPs’ offices would effectively be illegal political contributions.

“Can you cross-subsidize staff working out of party offices?”

LeBlanc recently joined the Board of Internal Economy and was speaking as an MP, not on behalf of the board.

Under House of Commons bylaws, MPs can spend money only in relation to their parliamentary activities. Parties must fund purely political work themselves.

On Parliament Hill, the distinction between political work and parliamentary duties is often too narrow to discern. But staff whose salaries are paid by the House of Commons typically work within the parliamentary precinct in Ottawa or as constituency assistants in MPs’ riding offices.

After the “Orange Wave” elected 59 New Democrats in Quebec, then-party leader Jack Layton agreed to set up the Montreal outpost, on the advice of his Quebec adviser, Raymond Guardia. Staff began working there in September 2011.

Today, some of the staff in the Montreal office are listed on the internal Parliament Hill phone directory as working for the NDP’s Research Office, which is in Ottawa. They are paid directly by the House of Commons.

Others in Montreal are paid through pooled contributions of about $7,000 from of the office budgets of each Quebec MP, the party says.

The House of Commons does not pay for the rented space on the third floor of the building on St-Laurent, which had previously been occupied by a marketing company. The NDP covers the rent.

The NDP insists that the Montreal office was set up simply to centralize efforts to support the party’s Quebec MPs, not to do party work.

Belanger said that staff in Montreal work on “exclusively parliamentary tasks for the 57 NDP MPs in Quebec. For example, staff are involved in direct communications (householders and ten per centers), media relations and stakeholder relations. These are roles that would otherwise be filled by constituency offices.” (Ten per centers are flyers MPs send to constituents.)

Many of these staff are affiliated with the NDP Research Office in their listings in the internal Parliament Hill telephone directory and have job titles that seem to go beyond mere MP work.

Montreal staffer David Patry, for example, is identified in the directory as both Director of Quebec Media in the research office and as an aide to Quebec MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau.

Other staff in the Montreal office are listed in the phone directory with roles such as “Communications (Quebec),” “Operations (Quebec)” or “Outreach (Quebec).”

All are listed with the same telephone number, the NDP Research Office’s switchboard, even though they work from Montreal.

The NDP provided a letter MP Joe Comartin wrote to House of Commons Clerk Audrey O’Brien to advise her that it was going to locate House of Commons staff in Montreal. O’Brien, apparently, had learned that the House was paying for staff in Montreal and had written to inquire.

Comartin responded in December 2011 that hiring the staff in Montreal was necessary because of the “the unusual circumstances of having such a large number of new Members in one region.”

The arrangement, Comartin wrote, “was reviewed, discussed extensively and approved by House of Commons Pay and Benefits and Financial Services.”

O’Brien could not be reached for comment Monday.

In 2012, Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe was found to have inappropriately used his House of Commons budget to pay the salary of party director general Gilbert Gardner between 2004 and 2011.

The Board of Internal Economy issued a statement saying, “It was never the intention of the Board to allow House of Commons resources to be used to support political party activity or party staff.” But the board said the rules, as written, were unclear, and it declined to take any disciplinary action.

The bylaws were rewritten to make clear that “parliamentary functions” that can be funded from MPs’ budgets do not include political party and electoral activities.

Among those declared not eligible were “any activities related to the administration, organization and internal communications of a political party.”

At the time, the NDP complained about the alleged misuse of House of Commons funds by the Bloc. Indeed, Comartin himself called for an inquiry.

He wrote to House Speaker Andrew Scheer saying he was concerned about this “potential abuse of resources of the House of Commons for partisan purposes.”

Not only is the former head of Quebecor – which owns the Journal de Montreal, the French TV network TVA, Videotron, a host of newspapers and the Sun News Network – apparently not a conservative lackey; he’s an avowed separatist.

It’s a sharp turn of events for the Quebec businessman who had been accused of using his TV network to shill for the Conservatives and attack the publicly funded CBC.

Now, Peladeau promises to play a much different role: As a candidate for the Parti Quebecois in the Quebec election, he could emerge as a leading sovereignist voice if Pauline Marois wins a majority and turns her sights on a referendum. In some quarters, Peladeau is already being dubbed Marois’ natural successor as leader (and if he is lucky, as premier).

Unlikely as it may have once seemed, that leaves the prospect of Harper (if he is still prime minister) some day confronting Peladeau in a fight for the country’s future.

The possibility comes as a surprise to many. But some wonder if Peladeau ever really was a rock-solid conservative.

Was conservatism in his bones? Or did he merely establish a TV network with high-profile conservative commentators such as Ezra Levant to cosy up to Harper’s government so it would grant the regulatory TV licence Sun News needed to thrive?

“I’m not sure whether he’s a conservative or not,” said Chris Waddell, director of Carleton University’s School of Journalism. “He thought there was an opportunity there to try to turn around a money-losing TV station.”

Waddell said that under Peladeau, Quebecor’s plan was to convince the CRTC — and if necessary, the federal cabinet — to require cable companies to put the Sun’s network on their basic packages. That would have meant that even if no one was watching the channel, the leanly staffed company would still make a profit.

“What I don’t know is if he looked at that and said, ‘The best way to try to persuade the government would be if we come up with a conservative channel’ that they were more willing to push through,” said Waddell.

If so, it would have been nothing more than a business decision. Nothing to do with ideology or politics.

Federal politicians are steering clear of commenting on Peladeau’s entry to provincial politics. “We have nothing to add to your story,” Harper’s director of communications, Jason MacDonald said Monday.

“These are issues and questions that will be addressed by the voters of Quebec.”

Similarly, an aide to NDP leader Thomas Mulcair said the party would not comment.

When Peladeau announced plans in 2010 for Sun News Network, some labelled it “Fox News North” and concerns were raised about whether it would merely be a mouthpiece for the governing Tories. The suspicions were fuelled by the fact that it was headed by Kory Teneyke, a former director of communications to Harper.

But Peladeau shrugged and said the network would “aim to challenge conventional wisdom and offer Canadians a new choice and a new voice.”

In the 2011 election, Peladeau went out of his way to assert his independence. He wrote a lengthy editorial for his newspapers in which he outed an influential campaign adviser for the Conservative party as the source of a potentially embarrassing photo alleged to be of Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. The photo had been fed to Sun Media.

The photo showed six men wearing Santa Claus hats and carrying weapons in front of a military helicopter in Kuwait prior to the Iraq war. Given the Liberals’ opposition to the war, if Ignatieff were in the photo, the political blow would have been immeasurable. But it wasn’t Ignatieff. It was someone else.

Once that became clear, Peladeau blasted the Tories for trying to smear Ignatieff and, in the process, harm the reputation of the Liberal leader and his own media company.

“Bad information is an occupational hazard in this business, and fortunately our in-house protocols prevented the unthinkable.,” he wrote.

“But it is the ultimate source of this material that is profoundly troubling to me, my colleagues and, I think, should be of concern to all Canadians.”

Later that year, after the Tories were re-elected with a majority, Peladeau appeared at a House of Commons committee where he argued that the CBC should be forced to publicly release more information about its operations.

NDP MP Charlie Angus pressed him on whether his reporters were following orders from management — “somewhere higher up the food chain” — when they wrote their stories.

“This is not a party,” said Peladeau. “This is a business, and we’re running our newspaper like any of our other businesses.”

mkennedy@ottawacitizen.com

Twitter.com/Mark_Kennedy_

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/was-pierre-karl-peladeau-ever-politically-conservative/feed1Pauline Marois, Pierre Karl Peladeau,markkennedy1Raises for MPs, senators more than double average wage boost for public sector unionshttp://o.canada.com/news/national/raises-for-mps-senators-more-than-double-average-wage-boost-for-public-sector-unions
http://o.canada.com/news/national/raises-for-mps-senators-more-than-double-average-wage-boost-for-public-sector-unions#respondFri, 07 Mar 2014 21:26:58 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=407957]]>OTTAWA — While the federal government speaks of fiscal restraint and cutting spending to return to a balanced budget, MPs are about to get a wage increase of 2.2 per cent.

And senators, whose salary increases are tied to what MPs earn, will take home 2.5-per-cent more this year than last, starting April 1.

For the fiscal year 2014-15, MPs will earn a base salary of $163,700, and senators will earn $138,200.

The increases are more than double the one-per-cent pay raise MPs are giving senior civil servants in the House of Commons administration. One per cent is also the average wage increase for public service unions, according to federal data on wage settlements.

MPs didn’t have to lift a finger to get this raise: After MPs allowed a wage freeze to end, existing federal legislation automatically kicked in to provide an annual boost on April 1. A notice of the increase went out to MPs this week from the House of Commons board of internal economy, just prior to the March parliamentary break.

Federal legislation requires senators to be paid $25,000 less than MPs, meaning a pay increase in the Commons punches up pay in the Senate (and makes the percentage increase, though not the wage figure, slightly higher).

“They are, as a group, receiving a real wage increase because inflation won’t be at 2.2 per cent,” said economist Mike Moffatt from the Ivey School of Business at Western University in London, Ont. However, the average Canadian has seen an increase in the last year of about 2.38 per cent in their average hourly rate, and 2.17 per cent in their average weekly rate, according to federal labour data.

Raises will also be doled out on the bonuses that are paid to cabinet ministers, house leaders, the Opposition leader, whips, deputy whips and committee chairs, along with the Speaker in the Commons and the Speaker in the Senate.

For example, MPs who are committee and caucus chairs will earn a bonus of $11,500 in the coming fiscal year, an increase of $200 from the $11,300 they earned in the last fiscal year. Whips for the government and the Official Opposition will receive a bonus of $29,400, an increase of $600 from the $28,800 they earned last year.

The increase in base salary for the 306 MPs in the House of Commons and to 93 senators, and bonuses paid out to the Speaker of the Commons, his deputies, house leaders in the Commons and deputies, whips and committee chairs, will cost almost $1.5 million. That number will go up when the Senate determines how much more it will pay in bonuses to senators performing extra duties.

Moffatt said the increase is actually small relative to what Canadians earning six-figure salaries have received. But those high-income earners have seen their wages increase faster than Canadians who earn at or below the median income in the country, he added.

However, large public sector unions on average have received less than half the increase MPs will receive. The increase to parliamentarians is also larger than what smaller unions and non-unionized workers usually receive, Moffat said.

In the private sector, “the point of having higher salaries is either to reward people or retain them,” said Moffatt, who has done research on income in Canada. “I suspect for a lot of (MPs), they would take these jobs for half the money. For a lot of them, it’s not about the money in the first place.”

Several MPs who are members of the internal economy board declined to comment, referring queries to the office of the Speaker of the House of Commons or the Senate.

It’s the second time in as many years that MPs and senators are receiving a salary increase, after having their wages frozen between fiscal years 2009-2010 and 2012-13.

As with last year, this spending increase will be reported when the government tables its supplementary estimates, a listing of extra spending not included in the government’s initial spending projections for a fiscal year.

The median income for full-time workers in Canada according to the National Household Survey: $47,868

Approximate date when Thomas Mulcair will earn the median income based on his new salary and bonus: June 12

Approximate date when Stephen Harper will earn the median income based on his new salary and bonus: May 24

How much suspended senators Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau will earn as senators: $0

(Sources: Statistics Canada, Library of Parliament, House of Commons, Employment and Social Development Canada)

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/raises-for-mps-senators-more-than-double-average-wage-boost-for-public-sector-unions/feed00.000000 0.0000000.0000000.000000The House of CommonsjordanpresPaul Calandra, Nathan Cullen exchange heated words in loud foyer exchangehttp://o.canada.com/news/paul-calandra-nathan-cullen-exchange-heated-words-in-loud-foyer-exchange
http://o.canada.com/news/paul-calandra-nathan-cullen-exchange-heated-words-in-loud-foyer-exchange#commentsFri, 07 Mar 2014 00:11:54 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=407803]]>A televised debate between Conservative MP Paul Calandra and NDP House Leader Nathan Cullen turned nasty after the cameras stopped rolling on Tuesday, leading to the two politicians exchanging loud insults in the foyer of the House of Commons.

“They were visibly upset and yelling at each other,” said Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux, who witnessed the noisy argument. “It wasn’t one of their more distinguishing moments. They were definitely upset, and that’s putting it mildly.”

Calandra and Cullen had just completed two back-to-back panels — first on CPAC, the second on CBC — in which they discussed the question of privilege Cullen successfully raised against Conservative MP Brad Butt.

Butt had admitted making up a story about campaign workers stealing voter information cards for fraudulent purposes.

As the second panel ended, the debate continued.

“It was back and forth,” said Lamoureux. “One might have been more animated than the other but there were words. Both were loud and I would question as to whether or not it was appropriate. It looked very personal.”

Calandra, parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said he took exception when Cullen made a crack about a Calandra family dispute involving his mother’s will, which the Ottawa Citizen has reported on.

“As we left the chair, Cullen said, ‘Why don’t you go steal some more money from your mother?’ ” Calandra said in an interview on Thursday. “I obviously took offence at that and asked him to apologize.”

Calandra said he also asked Cullen to apologize for comments Cullen and NDP Leader Tom Mulcair earlier made about Pierre Poilievre in the House of Commons.

“I then further asked him to apologize to the minister for democratic reform, both he and Mr. Mulcair, for what they said, the inappropriate comments during Question Period. They know what they said, repeatedly. That then became heated when he asked me if I had a chemical imbalance in my head, Mr. Cullen.”

Cullen said Thursday that Calandra’s attack on him came out of the blue.

“As we were finishing up, he just went off on some diatribe, calling me all sorts of vicious names, all the usual suspects and then some more,” he said. “Totally inexplicable. It was the most bizarre aggressive exchange I’ve ever had.”

Cullen said Calandra called him “a worthless human being, disgusting, a coward. He taunted me to run away. It was unbelievable. Even as I talk to you about it I’m not quite sure that it makes sense that this happened but it absolutely did.

“I stood and took it for a while, trying to figure out what he was talking about, and then absolutely said, you’re out of your mind,” he said.

The conflict between the two men was not the only outbreak of temper this week. On Thursday, during a debate in the House of Commons about tabling documents, Justice Minister Peter MacKay threw some papers on the floor.

As we head into a Quebec provincial election, with the separatist Parti Quebecois in a position to win a majority, this much can be taken as given; the response in the rest of Canada to any resulting new push for independence will be quite different from last time, or the time before that. There will be no candle in the window — no heartfelt plea from Main Street Ontario, imploring Quebecers to vote “Non.” If anything, the opposite could occur.

That means the tectonic plates underlying Canadian politics may be about to move, rather dramatically, after two decades of relative calm. Justin Trudeau’s Liberals seem best positioned, for now, to convert a crisis into votes. Nationalism being the unpredictable beast it is, that could change in a heartbeat. But here is what Quebecers should not expect, if they give Premier Pauline Marois the whip hand; anything but a cold shoulder, brusque dismissal and stony silence from across the Ottawa River. That’s the best-case scenario.

Quebec Premier Pauline Marois responds to Opposition questions over the budget speech to be tabled later in the day, Thursday, February 20, 2014 at the legislature in Quebec City. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot

Let’s assume Marois wins big, jolting a bolt of electricity through the embalmed corpse of the independence movement, and setting in motion the mechanics of another referendum. Just as during the Meech and Charlottetown debates a generation ago, political elites and the chattering classes will seek to shepherd public opinion in the ROC (Rest of Canada) into a conciliatory frame of mind. They will argue, as they are wont to do, that we’re all much better off together than apart. They will be right about that. But their soothing ode will fall on millions of deaf ears.

The reason is threefold. First, Ontarians formed the bedrock of the pro-unity side, outside Quebec, in the old national unity debates. But the Ontario of today is far different from the one of the latter 20th Century. Its manufacturing economy has been decimated. In 2009/10 the province joined the have-nots under the federal equalization formula — receiving $347 million. This year Ontario is to receive just over $3 billion; Quebec, just under $8 billion.

Indeed Quebec, Conservative Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Denis Lebel helpfully pointed out Monday, “receives $16.3 billion more from the federal government than it contributes to Ottawa.” Nice. Resentment of Quebec’s endless gripes has always bubbled just below the waterline in Ontario. With so many in the province struggling, expect that to surface.

Another factor is the reason for Marois’ recent surge to front-runner status; Quebec’s proposed Charter of Values, which would dictate to provincial civil servants what articles of religious clothing or jewelry they may and may not wear on the job. When the Charter was unveiled last summer, the enlightened consensus was that Quebecers would en masse reject and punish such an unabashed appeal to their baser instincts. The opposite has happened.

There’s been much hand-wringing about the damage this has done Quebec’s reputation internationally; not enough attention paid, likely, to the potential impact on individual opinion in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia of one province’s majority, through democratic choice, placing itself offside of the pluralism that animates the rest of the country, as reflected in the Charter of Rights. If Marois wins her majority, Quebec truly will be a distinct society.

Third is the intangible Law of Threes; the sense, already germinating in the aftermath of the 1995 referendum, that the country cannot regularly be held hostage and hijacked by a minority of its population — now a minority within a minority. In the face of a third referendum, the political pressure from Main Street in the rest of Canada to push back — possibly even via a movement for a nationwide referendum on whether Quebec should be handed its hat, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out — would be impossible to ignore.

For the time being Trudeau, by virtue of his fluency in both official languages, strong base in Quebec, clear stand against the Charter from its inception, and the separatist-battling mantle of his late father, is best positioned to take on the role of Captain Canada. Opposition leader Thomas Mulcair served notice in a CBC Radio interview last weekend that he also intends to vie for the part, saying that “the NDP was the first party get rid of the separatists.”

The wild card is simply this: The Tories hold just five seats in Quebec and the totality of their majority rests on a still-new coalition between Alberta and rural and suburban Ontario. Their precursor party, Reform, was born in a lather of anti-Quebec feeling spurred by the Mulroney government’s failed overtures to Quebec soft nationalists.

The stage could soon be set, therefore, for the governing party to become the preferred vehicle for anyone who is resentful of yet another tussle over Quebec. Given the Harper government’s advanced age and desperate need for a new mission, it’s difficult to imagine it passing up such an opportunity.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/dear-canada-welcome-to-national-unity-crisis-3-0/feed10.000000 0.0000000.0000000.000000QuebecmikedentandtQuebec Premier Pauline Marois Tories get flak for sending ‘partisan’ delegation to Ukrainehttp://o.canada.com/news/tories-get-flak-for-sending-partisan-delegation-to-ukraine
http://o.canada.com/news/tories-get-flak-for-sending-partisan-delegation-to-ukraine#respondWed, 26 Feb 2014 20:52:36 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=403335]]>OTTAWA — The Canadian delegation heading to Ukraine this week includes Conservative backbench MPs and an unelected Conservative senator, but no representation from opposition parties in spite of their asking to be included.

The eight-person delegation led by Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird is also made up of representatives from the Ukrainian Canadian community. All are expected to meet with Ukraine’s interim government, opposition party and religious leaders Friday to assess what Canada can do for the country which has been in a state of upheaval since anti-government uprisings began in November.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau told reporters Wednesday that his request to have a Liberal representative included in the delegation was denied.

“We actually asked, as I’m sure the NDP did, to send along someone as well to demonstrate that this is not a partisan issue for Canadians, that we are united in our desire to help restore stability and democracy in Ukraine,” Trudeau said. “I worry that the partisan approach that this government has taken on this particular mission might highlight that it is about domestic politics.”

The Conservative government has gone to great lengths to court the vote of 1.2 million Ukrainian-Canadians and, in 2011, won a handful of swing ridings with large Ukrainian populations including Etobicoke Centre in Toronto and Elmwood-Transcona in Winnipeg.

When asked in Parliament why the Conservatives hadn’t included members from other parties in the delegation, Parliamentary Secretary for the Minister of Foreign Affairs David Anderson said the decision to send a delegation to Ukraine showed “Canada’s leadership on this issue” and added that “the Liberals actually thought this whole thing was a joke” — a reference to comments Trudeau made over the weekend about how Russia might react to the volatile situation in Ukraine given its loss in Olympic hockey. Trudeau later apologized for his remarks.

“We’re sending people across there who have been engaged in this issue, who have showed that we treat it seriously,” Anderson said.

Borys Wrzesnewskyj, a Ukrainian Canadian and former Liberal MP, described the government’s decision to create single-party delegation as “unfortunate.”

“Why is this a Conservative mission as opposed to a Canadian mission?” he asked. “It would tremendously benefit the delegation if we had people from all parties who have tremendous knowledge and have in the past worked very closely with many of the people in the transitional coalition government that’s forming in Ukraine.”

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair did not attack the government’s decision Wednesday and told reporters after his weekly caucus meeting that “frankly, at this stage of the game, I simply wish them success.”

The party’s foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar said in a tweet Wednesday that he was glad a Canadian delegation was en route to Ukraine but “Too bad only MPs from one party. We all stand with Ukrainian people.”

Bruce Hicks, a political scientist at York University in Toronto, said the government has no obligation to bring opposition MPs on the trip, but that the decision to invite backbench MPs Ted Opitz and James Bezan and Sen. Raynell Andreychuk has opened “a can of worms.”

“Technically the delegation is from the government of Canada, not from the parliament of Canada, but by including their own MPs, they’ve left themselves vulnerable to be accused of being partisan,” he said.

He added that sending a cross-section of the Canadian parliament “wouldn’t be bad optics” given that the delegation intends to meet with Ukraine’s opposition party.

Hicks also said he wasn’t convinced Opitz and Bezan would benefit directly from the trip, despite the fact that last month one Tory backbencher was caught on camera trying to take advantage a photo-op while part of a Canadian delegation to Israel.

“It’s the re-election. This is the million-dollar shot,” MP Mark Adler can be heard telling Stephen Harper’s staff while trying to get into a photo with the prime minister in front of Old Jerusalem’s Western Wall.

—

Canadian delegation

John Baird (Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada)

Raynell Andreychuk (Conservative Senator)

Ted Opitz (Conservative MP)

James Bezan (Conservative MP)

Victor Hetmanczuk (President and CEO, Canada-Ukraine Foundation)

Paul Grod (National President, Ukrainian Canadian Congress)

Taras Zalusky (Executive Director, Ukrainian Canadian Congress)

Krystina Waler (Board Member, Ukrainian Canadian Professionals and Business Association)

Imagine that last June, or last September, or last week, the prime minister had convened a rare news conference and announced that henceforth, all Conservative senators, beginning with Irving Gerstein and Marjory LeBreton, would be independent. No more role for them on national campaigns; no more fundraising; no more organizing; no more backroom advice. In an unprecedented, transformative shift, the governing party would gently but firmly shove all its Red Chamber appointees, the quintessential Ottawa insiders, outside the circle of power.

“We tried to push through reform,” our imaginary PM tells the assembled hacks, as we pound frantically away on our smartphones. “The opposition wouldn’t allow it. So we made appointments as required under our present system, in order to move democratic, legitimate legislation past illegitimate, unelected Liberal Senate appointees, while respecting advisory Senate elections where they occurred, as in Alberta. We did our best. But that hasn’t worked so well either, as we saw all too clearly last year.” More gasps, from the gallery.

“We continue to await the Supreme Court’s opinion about what is required, constitutionally, for us to properly reform, or completely abolish the upper house, which as it stands is undemocratic, wasteful and unacceptable. But in the meantime… ”

It’s impossible to say for certain, obviously, what the response would have been. We can assume, though, that there would have been an overwhelming sense of shock, as there was with Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s announcement last Wednesday. After that? Here’s a wild guess. There would have been accolades across the board, and grumpy back-biting from the Opposition, as strategists and pundits marvelled at the PM’s coup. A return to the Harper of old, would have been the theme. For how better to reclaim the founding principles of Reform than to irrevocably, publicly sever the party’s ties with the “fat cats” in the Senate? Suddenly, NDP Leader Tom Mulcair’s calls for abolition would have sounded hollow; and Trudeau’s claims to being a democratic reformer? They’d have been lost, amid the excited din.

For the question remains, and it is one that really does transcend partisanship: What can be done about the Senate? We know it offends and annoys most Canadians, when they pause to think about it at all, that 105 appointees can be paid $130,000 each a year to draft policy reports that are ignored, or do party work on the taxpayer’s dime. Sen. Gerstein, for one. How, precisely, does he divide his working hours between “Senate business” and Conservative party fundraising? Is there a time sheet?

For this is the root of the problem that came to light last year, thanks primarily to the self-interested manoeuvrings and then self-immolation of Sen. Mike Duffy. In the new post-corporate-donation, post-union-donation, post-federal subsidy world of campaign finance, fundraising must be aggressive and relentless. Under this system, especially, how can a political party resist the temptation to use its sitting senators – many of whom do have a bit of time on their hands, despite their backbreaking schedule – as human cash collectors? Unless, that is, such obvious overlapping interests are banned?

If a referendum on Senate abolition were held today, it’s a foregone conclusion that the ‘Yes’ would win by an overwhelming margin. It is also true that such abolition would require at least the approval of seven provinces, constituting 50 per cent of the population – and possibly unanimity. Though we have yet to hear from the Supreme Court, the chances of the court’s allowing elections and term limits, without a reframing of the Constitution, appear remote. Moreover, imagine the situation if 24 senators from Quebec were elected, and six from Alberta were elected, and all felt entitled – on account of being elected – to not only tweak laws, but write them. How long would that system last?

Fundamental reform (and elections are implicitly fundamental) probably requires that the edifice of the Constitution be taken apart and reassembled. But practically, such a process is anathema; especially at a time when the Parti Quebecois is once again on the ascendant. All across Canada now, as Mulcair declares his openness to doing the “hard work” of constitutional reform, hands clap over ears in horror, to inner visions of Quebec Premier Pauline Marois appearing like the ghost of referendums past, brandishing her list of demands. Constitutional reform is not a “solution” to be embraced – at least not for now. The best, achievable remedy, therefore, is the one recently proposed; voluntary disassociation between the Senate and the parties, and future appointments handled by an arms-length, transparent, non-partisan (or multi-partisan) body, based on merit.

All of which is why, from a Reform Party principle standpoint, from a Conservative standpoint, Trudeau’s move, in Harper’s hands, would have been nothing short of genius. It could have put him back at the top of the heap. Whereas as things stand — with Trudeau leading — the prime minister has been reduced, once again, to playing defence.

Twitter.com/mdentandt

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/about-that-senate-gambit-what-if-harper-had-done-it/feed1senatemikedentandtI won’t be silenced, Mulcair tells Commons ‘referee’http://o.canada.com/news/i-wont-be-silenced-mulcair-tells-commons-referee
http://o.canada.com/news/i-wont-be-silenced-mulcair-tells-commons-referee#commentsTue, 28 Jan 2014 23:46:33 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=389666]]>OTTAWA — NDP Leader Tom Mulcair seemingly questioned the impartiality of the referee of the House of Commons on Tuesday, effectively accusing the Speaker of picking sides and favouring the government in question period.

Mulcair said he refuses to be silenced in question period by Speaker Andrew Scheer on matters of government business, arguing that the Speaker should remain a referee and not become a player who stops questions from being asked.

Scheer chided Mulcair on Tuesday afternoon, saying that one of his questions to Prime Minister Stephen Harper about the RCMP investigation into former Liberal senator Mac Harb had nothing to do with government business — a prerequisite for queries during question period.

According to court documents, Harb allegedly sold 99.99 per cent ownership of his declared primary residence to a former Brunei diplomat to Canada. That diplomat, Magdalene Teo, has not fully responded to RCMP queries in the force’s investigation of Harb over allegations of fraud and breach of trust, according to court documents.

Mulcair was starting to ask Harper about the RCMP investigation into Harb, and a deal he made on the house he told the Senate was his primary residence, when Scheer stood up and told him the question was out of bounds. Scheer is a Saskatchewan Conservative MP.

The NDP leader disagreed, arguing it was a matter of public interest to see what the government of Canada was doing to make Teo speak with investigators.

Mulcair eventually asked the question, and Harper gave an answer, but the NDP leader served notice after question period that he is not happy with how Scheer has been refereeing some of the debate.

“I’ve been doing this job for a while. I’ve seen this situation before where the referee decides that he’s going to become a player in the sport. It’s ill advised for the Speaker to start this. And I think he made a mistake with me today,” Mulcair told reporters outside the Commons.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair asks a question during question period in the House of Commons in Ottawa, Tuesday January 28, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

“So if the Speaker of the House of Commons is going to try to shut down questions about government business from the leader of the Official Opposition before he even hears the end of the question, then we’ve entered new territory, and I’m telling you right now I’m not going to be told to sit down on questions that have to do with the public and that have to do with government business.”

When questioned about it by reporters, Mulcair stopped short of directly challenging Scheer’s impartiality, but said he has a lot of concerns with the Conservatives using the Speaker to stop debates.

“The Speaker didn’t even let me ask the question. I am from the Official Opposition. This is a question that’s of public interest, it concerns government, the public has the right.”

Earlier in the day, Scheer came back with a ruling in the Commons that told MPs he wouldn’t police the answers during debate, but rather the questions. He urged MPs to refrain from what he called “hybrid” questions that have a long preamble criticizing the actions and statements of other parties but have nothing to do with federal government responsibility.

“I will continue to rule questions out of order that do not establish a direct link to the administrative responsibilities of the government,” Sheer told the Commons in his ruling.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/i-wont-be-silenced-mulcair-tells-commons-referee/feed30.000000 0.0000000.0000000.000000Commons Speaker Andrew ScheerjordanpresNDP Leader Tom MulcairExpecting big changes in the House of Commons? Think againhttp://o.canada.com/news/expecting-big-changes-in-the-house-of-commons-think-again
http://o.canada.com/news/expecting-big-changes-in-the-house-of-commons-think-again#respondSun, 26 Jan 2014 19:33:57 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=388408]]>With MPs back in the House Monday, here is a thumbnail guide to what we can expect from the Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats in the days and weeks ahead. Top-line hint: steady as she goes.

Stephen Harper’s call to humility

The prime minister and his party were rocked hard last year by the Senate expense scandal. In response, the Prime Minister’s Office doubled down on its attack strategies. Harper’s relationship with the media, never good, grew worse. Ontario MP Paul Calandra, chippy to a fault, became the new face of the government in the House of Commons. Through the latter half of last year the Tories steadily lost ground in the polls and Harper’s personal popularity tanked.

There is a view that the PM could do himself much good by engaging more freely with the media and striking a more humble tone this year. There was rumbling in the Tory caucus last fall that the PMO needed to be less controlling, less rabidly partisan and more amenable to the aspirations of backbench Conservative MPs. And, we can all agree, Harper should bench the charmless Calandra.

What he’s likely to do instead:

All indications are that Harper’s not about to change – and that the more pundits insist he must, the less likely he is to do so. His new video series, 24-Seven, is clearly intended to soften and humanize his image, as are the repeat musical performances. We can expect controlled engagement – speeches or Q&A sessions, and possibly a more matter-of-fact tone from MPs in the House. But the closer, as always, will be a calculated appeal to the financial interests of the middle class. This will be a year in which the Tories try to avoid giving egregious offense multiple times, while they line up a small budget surplus and the goodies, such as income-splitting, that will flow from it. That’s their charm offensive.

Thomas Mulcair’s lunge for the centre

Public opinion polls, including one this month by Abacus Research, show that Mulcair personally has been well received by Canadians. As he has grown more relaxed in the Opposition leader’s role, it’s fair to say he’s become the dominant personality in the House. On a good Mulcair day, the Tories could do little but duck for cover.

His problem, as reflected in the byelections last November, is that a plurality of Canadians, especially in Ontario and parts westward, don’t believe his party can mind the store. Mulcair, a former Quebec provincial Liberal, could change this by shoving his party gently but firmly towards the pragmatic middle, especially as regards energy. Specifically, he could embrace the Alberta oilpatch and become its enthusiastic partner in seeking environmentally sustainable growth, rather than its ideological adversary.

What he’s likely to do instead:

Mulcair puts on a friendly face but has shown himself to be as dogged as, yes, Harper himself, in ignoring pundits’ wagging fingers. A significant group within his party opposes pipeline development outright and believes public opinion is turning against it. There’s also a view that his strength on the Senate file makes him the obvious alternative to Harper, and that his ferocity as a debater is a trump card to be played in the 2015 campaign. Consequently, there’s no sense of crisis within the NDP. They like where they are, well ahead of where they’ve ever been before between campaigns, and will continue playing the long game.

Justin Trudeau’s excellent policy adventure

Trudeau is coming off the best year of any politician in Canada in recent memory. Nearly 60 per cent of those surveyed by Abacus this month said they think he has has “good ideas for the future of the country.” More than half, including 27 per cent of declared Conservatives, said they think he has “sound judgment.” Nevertheless, Trudeau has faced persistent criticism from his rivals, and from media pundits, that he’s all hat, no cattle. Trudeau could offset this, and his occasional bouts of foot-in-mouth, by giving a few detailed speeches on the economy, in which he persuasively explains why Canada’s middle class is in trouble, then persuasively explains what he plans to do about it.

What he’s likely to do instead:

Since before he became Liberal leader Trudeau’s strategy has been to offer a broad direction in policy areas that have symbolic heft, such as supporting the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, legalizing pot or opposing Quebec’s proposed values charter, but avoid going into granular detail, particularly on his core issue of income inequality and the middle class.

The official reason is that the policy must be generated from the ground up. The practical reason is that income inequality is an extraordinarily tricky thing to tackle, in a tax-averse society, and the Liberals haven’t quite got it figured out. Moreover, they’re leery of policy theft of the kind they perpetrated on Reform and the Canadian Alliance in the 1990s. Trudeau’s lead places zero pressure on him to change tack, for now. Therefore, he won’t.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Roving foreign correspondent Matthew Fisher has spent most of last 30 years out of country reporting on international affairs.

ABOARD THE CANADIAN — Whenever I can find the time when I am back in Canada, I ride Via Rail’s “Canadian” from Toronto to Vancouver.

One reason I took the 4,466-kilometre journey earlier this month was to again marvel at the graceful, 60-year-old stainless steel rolling stock. Another was to revel in the wintry scenery and catch glimpses of old haunts.

Perhaps the biggest justification for making the long transcontinental trek was the chance to hear Canadians talk about their lives, their country and their take on the world. During the four-day expedition, I spoke with a federal prison guard from British Columbia; a similarly optimistic parole officer working in northern Manitoba; a fair-minded adjudicator hearing sex-abuse claims from natives who had attended residential schools in northwestern Ontario; a keen amateur street-car driver from Alberta; a pair of jovial retired railroaders from Quebec City; a politically minded Canadian constitutional law expert teaching in Australia; and a New Democrat MP from southwestern Ontario who wondered with good reason why Tom Mulcair was not getting much credit for his sharp performance in the House of Commons.

This eclectic, constantly changing cast crossed paths several times a day in the dining car or in the glass-roofed dome or bullet-nosed lounge in the tail-end Park car. For some it was a journey of a lifetime. Others had ended up on the train at the last minute because of a fiasco at Toronto’s Pearson Airport, where all flights had been grounded for a time because it was too cold.

Even in the gelid conditions in northern Ontario or out on the open prairie it wasn’t too cold for the train, although the journey west started four hours late because the inbound train to Toronto had been stuck behind freight locomotives that had broken down on the main line.

The odyssey provided an intimate view not only of the landscape but how in the constant passing of container, lumber and wheat trains, Canada’s railways are still a brilliant gauge of the country’s remarkable economic prosperity

To my chagrin although not to my surprise, the travellers captivated by the endless taiga and ice were seldom particularly curious or opinionated about the world. The Harper government has, for example, clearly made unquestioning support of Israel a top priority, but the issue barely registered with this group. Nor did the brutal civil war ripping apart Syria, Egypt’s aborted democratic experiment, the mega-typhoon in the Philippines or the question of whether Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi would be a success.

As everywhere else, the international news stories of greatest interest from 2013 were the birth of the royal baby in London and the death of Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg.

As for Canada’s global role, few had much to say. Concern was expressed for the welfare of Canadian soldiers who had been in combat in Afghanistan. But few strong opinions were ventured about Canada’s long mission there or the cost in blood and treasure.

Not that it dominated conversation, but the only pressing foreign issue of much interest was what the Obama White House might decide to do about the Keystone XL pipeline. The general feeling was that it was vital for Canada’s future prosperity to develop Alberta’s oilsands as well as the natural gas fields in northern British Columbia.

The only passenger rocking the boat a bit — and he mostly did it in a polite way despite some goading from me — was a young man who had recently come to Canada from the United States to work for a Canadian branch of an American environmental group. He spoke passionately about how, for the sake of the world and for Canada’s native peoples, the oilsands had to be shut down.

Curiously, a result of the Obama government’s dithering about whether to approve the pipeline could be seen every few kilometres. Via’s train No. 1 was frequently shunted on to sidings to let locomotives trundle past that were taking a potentially far greater environmental risk by hauling incredible loads of oil and gas.

Aside from hockey, what really preoccupied those wrapped in the warm cocoon that the sleeper train provided was what was happening closer to home. That is, what was going on in regions and neighbourhoods.

Still, when the journey ended seven hours late in drizzle in Vancouver, I was left with the impression that the decent folks who boarded and disembarked from the Canadian as it snaked across the Dominion were not terribly scandalized by such dramas. Although not much interested in what was happening in Ottawa or Toronto, let alone overseas, these Canadians were quietly confident about themselves and their future.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/my-train-of-thought-canadians-are-inward-looking-but-quietly-confident/feed2ViafisherrmatthewMulcair promises more direct contact with Canadianshttp://o.canada.com/news/national/mulcair-promises-more-direct-contact-with-canadians
http://o.canada.com/news/national/mulcair-promises-more-direct-contact-with-canadians#respondFri, 17 Jan 2014 17:08:58 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=383989]]>OTTAWA — The NDP appears to be taking a page from Justin Trudeau’s playbook with a commitment to getting out more to hear what Canadians have to say and to ensure people right across Canada know what the party has on offer.

While Tom Mulcair has earned much praise for his sharp grilling of the prime minister on the Senate expense scandal during question period, polls suggest his Liberal adversary — who is on the road much more than he’s on Parliament Hill — has reaped the rewards.

With that, the key message emerging from an NDP strategy session in Ottawa ahead of the winter session was that Canadians across the country can expect to see the leader of the official Opposition in their neighbourhoods a lot more in 2014.

In a rallying, election-style speech before caucus Friday, Mulcair announced his party was taking on the plight of small businesses by launching a national consultation with owners of small and medium-size businesses this spring on why so few are growing into larger companies with more employees.

Mulcair said the number of small businesses in Canada is up by more than 44,000 since 2006 despite the recession, yet there are fewer medium-sized businesses.

“That’s a trend that can’t be allowed to continue,” he said. “We’re reaching out, we’re engaging local business owners and we’re going to work together to find ways to help them grow and prosper in the 21st century.”

He also announced a “nationwide” campaign to “make life more affordable for Canadian families.” It starts next week with a listening tour focused on the working poor, seniors on fixed incomes and middle-class Canadians frustrated by high credit card rates, collusion at the pumps and abusive ATM fees. The tour will take him to kitchen tables and town halls in northern Ontario, Winnipeg and Edmonton.

The NDP leader, however, insisted his travels would not result in a free ride for Stephen Harper.

“The prime minister had a tough year in 2013,” he said. “I promise you, it’s gonna be even tougher for him in 2014.”

Alexandre Boulerice, MP for the Montreal riding of Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie, summed up the strategy just before his leader’s big speech: “In the coming months, we will put the emphasis on direct contact with the public whenever possible,” he said.

“We will listen, (and) pass on the party’s message with respect to integrity, good jobs, environmental protection and respect for seniors.”

tcohen@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/tobicohen

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/mulcair-promises-more-direct-contact-with-canadians/feed0Mulcair hitting the roadtobicohenYear in a minute: Trudeau’s leadership lights a fire under the flagging Liberalshttp://o.canada.com/news/year-in-a-minute-trudeaus-leadership-lights-a-fire-under-the-flagging-liberals
http://o.canada.com/news/year-in-a-minute-trudeaus-leadership-lights-a-fire-under-the-flagging-liberals#respondThu, 19 Dec 2013 17:01:37 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=370301]]>OTTAWA – The most interesting story I covered this year was Justin Trudeau’s arrival as Liberal leader.

I had several opportunities over 2013 to sit down and interview Trudeau, as well as see him in action both before and after his leadership victory in April.

And what really struck me the most was his work ethic.

I first noticed it during the leadership race, when he could have easily rested on his laurels and still cruised to victory.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he was constantly criss-crossing the country in an attempt to meet as many people as possible.

Yes, he has made mistakes, such as his ill-advised comments about admiring China’s dictatorship.

Yes, there are concerns about his lack of policies, and his performance when going up against Stephen Harper and Tom Mulcair in the House of Commons. When he’s there.

But even now as Liberal leader, Trudeau still attends dozens of events every week and meets thousands of people every month in an attempt to generate excitement, raise money and rebuild the Liberal Party from the ground up.

The early signs have been encouraging for the Liberals, as they’ve raked in a record number of donations since Trudeau was named leader, and emerged as the big winners in November’s byelections in Toronto, Montreal and Manitoba.

Liberals will have to wait until 2015, however, to find out whether hard work really does equal success.

lberthiaume@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/leeberthiaume

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]]>http://o.canada.com/news/year-in-a-minute-trudeaus-leadership-lights-a-fire-under-the-flagging-liberals/feed0leeberthiaumePrime Minister Stephen Harper’s year-end interviews show some of his old mojohttp://o.canada.com/news/prime-minister-stephen-harpers-year-end-interviews-show-some-of-his-old-mojo
http://o.canada.com/news/prime-minister-stephen-harpers-year-end-interviews-show-some-of-his-old-mojo#respondSun, 22 Dec 2013 19:31:18 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=373041]]>Prime Minister Stephen Harper insists he isn’t campaigning quite yet. He’s intent on running government. To which we must reply yes, sure, balderdash; you may indeed be governing but you’re also campaigning – and doing a not-half-bad job of it, suddenly. The great, continuing mystery: Why don’t you campaign more often?

This has been a rotten year for the PM, most observers would agree. But in year-end interviews — including a lengthy one with Postmedia’s Ottawa bureau chief, Mark Kennedy — Harper provided a first glimpse of what could, possibly, become a path to re-election in 2015. There remain enormous obstacles in his path. What is now clear, for the first time since last May, is that he has a plan for recovery.

Curiously, for a reputed master strategist, Harper has not held the initiative for six months. His strategy in the House, in response to the Senate scandal rocking his government, has been akin to that of the hockey fighter who turns turtle on the ice as the blows rain down. Opposition leader Thomas Mulcair, meantime, has been all Bob Probert, in his prime.

The reason has been a brutally bad read of the demeanor required of a Canadian leader whose personal inner circle has been disgraced. In this context, wild, flailing counterattacks — yes Paul Calandra, this means you — boomerang. Fingerpointing, even more so. Humility, good grace and a degree of self-examination, without groveling or mewling, are the only defence. In his interview with Kennedy, Harper demonstrated all three.

On half a dozen fronts, including the Senate, Mike Duffy and Nigel Wright, this was Harper at close to his best; serious, thoughtful and in control, of himself and his agenda. For the first time he took personal responsibility for the Duffy mess, saying “the bottom line is that the buck stops with me.” It was the line he should have given during the famous train wreck of a press conference on May 21, and on any number of occasions since. It will be dismissed by Harper haters as meaningless.

But for his caucus, the Tory rank and file, and possibly a few disinterested small-c conservative swing voters, it will begin to lance the boil of internal disrespect that has badly weakened him. In the same vein, Harper firmly quashed speculation of his impending resignation. This was critical, as was the semi-amused tone; he got it just right.

The introspective portions of the Kennedy interview were even more interesting. Here Harper moved well back from the accusatory, condemning tone he’d struck towards former chief of staff Nigel Wright all through the fall, towards a far more saleable posture of disappointment, without anger. He allowed that “It’s been a very emotional experience.” But? “My job as a leader is not to indulge my own emotions. It’s to try and deal with situations.” This was Harper asserting what pollsters refer to as his “positives” — a reputation for competence, also badly shaken by the Wright-Duffy scandal.

From there we move into the more quotidian areas of government policy — broad Senate reform, pensions, immigration, pipelines, the National Research Council, justice. Here again, in each case, Harper expressed his most reasonable face, championing Conservative measures without tossing any rhetorical Molotov cocktails. His one assault on the opposition parties focused on the lack of serious policy disagreement between them and the government: “The country is doing well and the opponents, notably, have absolutely nothing to offer. That’s what’s most interesting. Almost no questions to or alternatives to the government in terms of substance.”

This hints volumes, with respect to Tory strategy in the coming election fight. Likewise Harper’s general demeanor. The former indicates he and his strategists are confident the majority of middle-class voters — in the West, on the Prairies, in the suburbs surrounding Toronto, in Southwestern Ont. — are not unhappy with the Conservatives’ overall policy direction. They’re right about that. If there were deep unease, we’d see a constituency pushing for clear policy alternatives and a political party championing such alternatives. That’s not happening. New Democrats are pro-free trade. Conservatives favour a woman’s right to choose.

Meantime, the PM’s milder, more straightforward tone would seem to indicate he intends to win back the centrist constituency — call them soccer moms and dads, swing voters or middle-class suburbanites with no particular political axe to grind — whose defection to the Trudeau Liberals explains every recent national poll.

Is Harper clear of the shoals? Not yet. There have been too many previous tonal adjustments, followed by inexplicable reversions to type, for anyone to assume that now. He’ll need to give more interviews like this one. Indeed there should have been more this month, rather than just three he offered, to Postmedia, Global News and TVA. This round shows that Harper is, after months of blunders, back on his feet. Whether he can stay there remains to be seen.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/prime-minister-stephen-harpers-year-end-interviews-show-some-of-his-old-mojo/feed00.000000 0.0000000.0000000.000000PM reflects on 2013mikedentandtNDP Leader Tom Mulcair confident heading into 2014 despite tough yearhttp://o.canada.com/news/national/ndp-leader-tom-mulcair-confident-heading-into-2014-despite-tough-year
http://o.canada.com/news/national/ndp-leader-tom-mulcair-confident-heading-into-2014-despite-tough-year#commentsWed, 18 Dec 2013 20:34:29 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=371134]]>OTTAWA — Tom Mulcair, the king of question period, remains optimistic that when it counts, Canadians will choose a party with something different to offer, even though the NDP has dipped in public opinion compared to the Liberals and has tanked both provincially and in several by-elections this past year.

At a year-end news conference Wednesday, the NDP leader largely dismissed polls that put his party in third place, well behind Justin Trudeau’s first place Liberals, in spite of widespread praise for the 786 rapid-fire questions he put to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the Nigel Wright-Mike Duffy Senate scandal.

And while the seemingly golden Grit leader makes front-page news no matter where he goes or what he does, Mulcair maintains he himself is “far from being frustrated.”

He’s hopeful Canadians will listen closely to what Trudeau actually says, and more importantly, to what he doesn’t say, and recognize that the NDP is the only opposition party with a plan.

“When he said he’d have nothing to propose for the next two years, turns out, he was telling the truth. I think Canadians deserve to know what anybody aspiring to form government is actually going to put on the table,” he said of Trudeau, who admitted in August that his prescription for what ails the country would be revealed in the party’s 2015 election platform. “That’s why we rolled out a very detailed piece on energy recently and we’re going to continue to do that.”

Mulcair said his “biggest challenge” in the lead up to the next election is to ensure Canadians are aware of the Liberal and Conservative “track record” and are reminded that they don’t have to return to what’s familiar.

The Liberals, he argued, promise one thing and do another, as was the case with getting rid of the GST and signing on to the Kyoto climate change agreement without a plan to meet its requirements. Meanwhile, he said, the Conservatives do what they say and that includes promoting pipelines that export jobs to the United States, and the view that a strong economy and a healthy environment cannot coexist.

“The NDP is putting forward clear policy on everything from the environment, to the economy, to social issues. We have a strong track record for good, solid public administration,” Mulcair said. “What used to be our ceiling is now our floor. We’re doing well. We have poured a very solid foundation. The concrete is hardening and we’re going to start building on that.”

Despite losing a caucus member to the Bloc Quebecois in February, a spectacular defeat of the governing New Democrats in Nova Scotia, an unanticipated failure by the NDP to win government in British Columbia despite soaring poll numbers and an ongoing revolt against the NDP leader in Newfoundland, Mulcair said it’s actually been a pretty good year.

The NDP, he said, narrowed the gap significantly in the recent Toronto-Centre byelection — a hopeful sign given there will be 70 seats up for grabs in the area in the next election.

The Orange Wave in Quebec that was “supposed to be as ephemeral as a soap-bubble” remains as strong as it was when 59 New Democrats were elected in 2011, he said, adding Canadians are also now confident in his party’s ability to take on Harper.

While he’s “not going to say that things have gone extraordinarily well provincially,” he maintains the NDP “brand is strong.”

Senators Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin came in third and fourth, respectively. However, their numbers — and the remainder of the list — paled in comparison to the top two, Google Canada’s Aaron Brindle says.

“Trudeau and Harper far outpaced the other politicians on the list,” said Brindle.

The federal politician category was added just last year to the Google Zeitgeist listing, which also includes top Canadian search data. This year’s top Canadian in the general search category was Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

“We look at where there’s going to be some amount of change,” Brindle said of the addition.

Trudeau’s numbers stemmed from his April 14 victory to become leader of the Liberal party. That week, April 14 to 20, saw the largest spike in search volume for the newly crowned leader. Regionally, the highest traffic for the top two spots originated in Ottawa, Guelph, Ont., and Kingston, Ont.

Harper’s search popularity was reasonably steady all year, but he couldn’t retain his top spot from 2012 against the surge of Trudeau searches.

Duffy made the list through three waves of traffic triggered by his expense scandal. Traffic peaked around the initial spending audit; the announcement of repayment hijinks with former Harper chief of staff Nigel Wright; and Duffy’s eventual suspension from Senate. Charlottetown, P.E.I., was far and away the highest source of regional traffic.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/trudeau-overtakes-harper-in-google-searches/feed2Clicking with TrudeaubfougereDaniel Paille’s departure another sign of tough times for Bloc Quebecoishttp://o.canada.com/news/national/daniel-pailles-departure-another-sign-of-tough-times-for-bloc-quebecois
http://o.canada.com/news/national/daniel-pailles-departure-another-sign-of-tough-times-for-bloc-quebecois#commentsMon, 16 Dec 2013 20:22:34 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=369548]]>OTTAWA — The resignation of Bloc Quebecois Leader Daniel Paille comes at what can only be considered a low point for the 22-year-old party, which was reduced to four seats in the House of Commons in 2011 and is now forced to pick its third leader in as many years.

Just five years ago, the BQ held 49 seats in what was then a minority Conservative government. All parties were desperate to find allies on an issue-by-issue basis. When then-Liberal leader Stephane Dion struck a deal with the NDP for a coalition if the Conservatives fell, the BQ was a key player in propping up the plan.

Now, Paille’s resignation for health reasons raises questions about whether the Bloc has a long-term future.

While the Bloc gained an additional MP last February when Claude Patry crossed the floor from the NDP, it lost another just a few months ago. Maria Mourani — its only female and visible minority MP — was tossed from caucus, and later quit the party, for speaking out against the Parti Quebecois’ controversial values charter barring public servants from wearing religious symbols.

Meanwhile, the number of Bloc electoral district associations continues to slip, with 11 of these local riding groups decertified since the 2011 election – either because the party chose to deregister them or because they failed to submit paperwork to Elections Canada on time. Six were decertified in 2013 alone, leaving the Bloc with just 43 registered associations in a province with 75 ridings.

Surprised to learn of Paille’s early departure, which the leader said was prompted by problems with epilepsy, Quebec political scientist and Carleton University professor Bruce Hicks described his performance as “lacklustre.”

Hicks said Paille had an extremely low profile, in part, because he does not have a seat in the House of Commons, and because his party does not have official party status. Along with former leader Gilles Duceppe, Paille lost his seat in 2011 when the NDP swept 59 of the province’s seats in what has been dubbed the Orange Wave. It has meant he cannot participate during question period, nor can his party play a role on Commons committees, which vet bills and study important issues.

But that’s not all, Hicks said. The party’s original raison-d’etre was to support the governing Parti Quebecois in its goal of achieving independence. Subsequent non-PQ governments in Quebec led many to question the Bloc’s continued existence, he said, and it was eventually “recast” as a voice for Quebecers in Ottawa.

Now, federal NDP Leader Tom Mulcair and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, also from Quebec, purport to be a voice for Quebecers.

Hicks called Paille’s handling of Quebec’s controversial charter of values a “misstep.” Playing “identity politics” and “pitting one group against another” might be beneficial to the PQ as it tries to bolster support for a majority mandate, but it leaves the Bloc in a difficult position. Tossing out Mourani for fear of looking “weak” on the charter controversy was “probably a bad move” that “made him look even weaker,” Hicks said.

“I think this probably contributed to the ongoing perception that the Bloc isn’t relevant, which it needs to be if it’s going to capture back some of the seats from the NDP.”

While the Bloc may be rudderless, it’s not clear this will lead to the end for the party. The Bloc enjoys a close relationship with the PQ so the political machine, in terms of fundraising and membership building, is there to “stage a comeback,” Hicks said, adding Paille’s departure could be part of a larger plan to find a “higher profile leader” who can “capture Quebecers’ imaginations in 2015.”

Mulcair was quick to offer supportive words to the departing leader via Twitter.

“Our thoughts are with you in this difficult time. Thanks for many years of service,” he wrote. “(My wife) Catherine and I wish you all the best.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper also wished him a “speedy recovery” via Twitter, while Conservative Quebec lieutenant Denis Lebel held a news conference to offer his support.

Trudeau said he was “saddened” to hear about Paille’s health issues and wished him well.

tcohen@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/tobicohen

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/daniel-pailles-departure-another-sign-of-tough-times-for-bloc-quebecois/feed1Bloc PailletobicohenEnergy policy is NDP leader Thomas Mulcair’s Achilles heelhttp://o.canada.com/news/energy-policy-is-ndp-leader-thomas-mulcairs-achilles-heel
http://o.canada.com/news/energy-policy-is-ndp-leader-thomas-mulcairs-achilles-heel#respondSun, 15 Dec 2013 20:20:05 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=368991]]>Thomas Mulcair, most observers of the Commons would agree, had the best year of any Canadian federal politician in recent memory. He hasn’t just established his bona fides as head of his party and Opposition leader. Virtually single-handedly, via daily grillings of Prime Minister Stephen Harper over the Wright-Duffy affair, the NDP leader has transformed Question Period into riveting, relevant, political theatre.

Why, then, are the New Democrats stuck at 23.5 per cent support, compared with 27.7 per cent for the Conservatives and 35.7 per cent for the Liberals? That’s a weighted average of recent federal polls, updated as of Dec. 11, courtesy of the polling site threehundredeight.com. It cannot be dismissed as an aberration or a quirk of methodology.

It shows the Liberals close to lapping the NDP in Ontario (38.4 to 22.5) and Atlantic Canada (47.9 to 24.3), solidly ahead on the Prairies (35.7 to 22.4) and leading comfortably in British Columbia (33.8 to 29.7) and Alberta (20.8 to 17.8). In all regions of the country except B.C. and Quebec, the NDP are in third place. Even in Quebec, Mulcair’s stronghold, the New Democrats lag the Liberals by almost 10 points. (35 to 26.3). The four November byelections, despite some brave talk to the contrary, were a wipeout for the NDP. What gives?

The easy answer is that it’s all Trudeau’s fault. Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s celebrity, together with a long-standing media bias towards the Liberals, goes this argument, have made it difficult for Mulcair to get a fair hearing. But there’s a wrinkle in this explanation: The rush of media coverage that accompanied Trudeau’s leadership bid has largely waned. And if there is a pro-Trudeau media bias it is increasingly hard to spot. Mulcair has been drawing rave reviews, for months; Trudeau, due to gaffes such as his remarks about China in November, mainly the opposite.

The better explanation, and one that may be harder to accept for NDP partisans, is policy. Consider Mulcair’s energy speech to the Economic Club of Canada in early December; then Trudeau’s energy speech to the Calgary Petroleum Club, a month prior.

Mulcair’s speech, billed as “a new vision for a new century,” and a “plan for a prosperous and sustainable energy future,” contained the usual pro-forma expressions of love for the resource economy. But its overwhelming message was not one of growth, but rather of containment. On the critical issue of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, Mulcair comes down against – despite the fact that the resource industry, the Alberta government, the overwhelming majority of Albertans, and a clear majority of Americans, are in favour, and that the project has passed every environmental review.

This is not only lousy policy; it puts the NDP offside of Western public opinion, and of any opinion sensitive to the idea that private industry, not MPs in Ottawa, should decide how best to get a given product to market. On the climate side, the NDP’s support for east-west transmission vs. north-south, contains a gaping hole: In either case the carbon footprint is the same. With respect to safety, the New Democrats have apparently not yet discerned that it may actually be less fraught politically for bitumen to travel south through the Dakotas rather than east into Canada’s most heavily populated regions, by rail, or over the Great Lakes in ships.

The Liberal stance on Keystone, as outlined in some detail in Trudeau’s Calgary speech, reads like simple common sense, by comparison. It acknowledges the need to safeguard the environment, but also the economic imperatives driving resource extraction. Its tone is solidly supportive. A good part of the speech was devoted to hammering the Harper Conservatives for their failure so far to get Keystone past the Obama administration and the U.S. environmental lobby.

The message that sends in Alberta, but also vote-rich B.C. and especially Ontario, is quite clear: Liberal economic centrism has the capacity to inherit and assume some of the Harper government’s small-c conservative economic policies, which are not unpopular, though the PM may be. We know this broadly because of the results of the past three federal elections, and the three Chretien majorities before that, but also in considerable detail because of Ipsos Reid’s 2011 election data set, which forms the backbone of Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson’s book, The Big Shift.

One does not need to accept that book’s core conclusion – that we’ve embarked on a Conservative century – to appreciate that the centre has shifted right. Trudeau understands this and is capitalizing on it. Mulcair, despite his talk of centrism, does not and is not. Strategically, though he may stumble, Trudeau is therefore set up to win; Mulcair, though he may excel at rhetorical combat, is set up to lose. It’s a problem the NDP should have seen and solved a year ago. That they haven’t even begun to address it, at this late juncture, does not bode well for the party in 2015.

Twitter.com/mdentandt

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/energy-policy-is-ndp-leader-thomas-mulcairs-achilles-heel/feed0NDP leader Tom MulcairmikedentandtSo far, so good: Trudeau says his ground game was key to a successful yearhttp://o.canada.com/news/so-far-so-good-trudeau-says-his-ground-game-was-key-to-a-succesful-year
http://o.canada.com/news/so-far-so-good-trudeau-says-his-ground-game-was-key-to-a-succesful-year#commentsFri, 13 Dec 2013 18:39:39 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=368264]]>OTTAWA — Justin Trudeau has spent his first eight months as Liberal leader trying to address two key reasons for the federal Liberals‘ decade-long demise: the party’s lack of a ground game, and its tendency to stand for nothing.

The early results of his leadership have bolstered Liberal confidence in both areas, yet Trudeau admits to “basing my entire political career on a gamble.”

High risk, high reward? With nearly two years until the next federal election, there’s plenty of time for things to go wrong. But for now, federal Liberals are flying high after a year that provided mostly good news for them.

The Liberal leadership race in April ended in a landslide victory for Trudeau, and saw the hatchets buried after decades of destructive party infighting.

Then there was a landmark byelection victory over the Conservatives in Labrador in May.

Next, Liberals looked robust in four byelections last month as they held off strong NDP challengers to keep two seats up for grabs in Montreal and Toronto, and fell just 391 votes short of snagging a traditional Conservative riding in Manitoba.

In an end-of-year interview, Trudeau attributed last month’s byelection success to several factors, including the Senate expense scandal and voters’ desire for change. Yet he also says there was a big difference in the way Liberals approached the races.

“The biggest lesson I learned (from the byelections) was just how important it is to get people involved,” Trudeau said. “To build up a ground game.”

That involved mobilizing thousands of volunteers in the four ridings and working the phones ’round the clock.

“One of the goals I talked an awful lot about during my leadership was making the Liberal Party not just a party, but a movement,” he says. “And for that, it required a groundswell of people who engaged positively with politics.

“And I think my leadership, if there was anything, it’s perhaps a little bit of a trigger for that.”

Yet it wasn’t just through byelections that the Liberals saw a wave of new support. Once the laughingstock of political fundraising, the party turned things around to a degree that even Conservatives — who have historically dominated this field — started to notice.

Between April and September, about 38,000 Canadians gave money to the Liberals, compared to 30,000 to the Conservatives, the first time another party has surpassed the Tories in recent years. (The number of NDP donors has hovered between 18,000 and 24,000 over the past two years.)

The Conservatives still raised more money over that period ($8.3 million to $5.2 million), but the donor numbers suggest Liberal momentum. Trudeau has been at the forefront, giving speeches, shaking hands and posing for photos at dozens of events across the country where his celebrity and charisma pull in crowds.

Yet, as first reported by Postmedia News, Trudeau had the worst attendance record in the House of Commons of the three major party leaders.

Trudeau has made a point of not missing votes on legislation, and has led off for his party when he has attended question period.

But NDP leader Tom Mulcair has held the spotlight by sharply challenging Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the Senate scandal, in particular.

Trudeau was also noticeably absent the night of Dec. 5 when Harper, Mulcair and many other MPs delivered statements in honour of Nelson Mandela, who had just died. Instead, Liberal human rights critic Irwin Cotler, a member of Mandela’s legal team while the South African was in prison, spoke for the party.

Trudeau says question period is more about “attacks and insults” than about serving Canadians, which he is trying to do by meeting voters across the country.

Meanwhile, it isn’t just the ground game that Trudeau has been working on.

The Liberal leader has staked positions on a number of hot topics, including support for the Keystone XL pipeline and the European free trade agreement, not to mention legalizing marijuana.

The issues he’s pronounced on are polarizing; there’s no ambiguity about where the Conservatives and NDP sit on any of them.

Is this his plan for ditching the Liberals’ reputation of standing for nothing, and re-establishing the party as fiscally conservative and socially progressive?

“You make it sound like it’s a tactic,” Trudeau says. “That’s not what it is. The responsibility of anyone who wants to become prime minister of this country is to get the big things right. Big things.”

He launches into a spirited argument about why it’s vitally important to the economy that Canada’s natural resources get to market, and why legalizing weed will reduce crime.

But in outlining positions on these issues, Trudeau has also made himself a target.

For example, his support for Keystone has prompted sharp criticism from within the environmental movement, even though he says he wants environmental sustainability to become a bedrock of oilsands development.

The Conservatives have also wasted no time accusing Trudeau of wanting to make it easier for kids to get pot, adding to their narrative that he’s soft on crime and weak in judgment.

Trudeau accuses the Conservatives of “trying to reduce the level of debate and intelligence around the debate.”

“When you see that Canada has the highest teen-use of marijuana amongst developed countries,” he says, “when we are funding organized crime to the millions of dollars a year with a prohibition that doesn’t work, I say that a reasonable leader … needs to be able to stand up with a realistic position, and not a position that is focused on being able to scare people into voting against or for something.”

“I am basing my entire political career on a gamble, a gamble that Canadians are better than Mr. Harper thinks they are.”

In other words, that Canadians will eschew Conservative attack ads and soundbites, and actually listen to his arguments.

“And so far I have been encouraged by the intelligence of the conversations I’ve had,” he says, “by the optimism, by the refusal to be dragged into the divisive, negative politics that Mr. Harper has advocated.”

If passed, the bill would do three things: 1) Give MPs the power to call a party leadership review if 15 per cent of party MPs supported such a move; 2) Democratize the process of expelling and ejecting MPs from their parties rather than simply letting the leader decide; and 3) Let local riding associations make final decisions about who runs in their riding, instead of giving party leaders the ultimate say.

Bill sponsor Michael Chong, MP for Wellington-Halton Hills (Ont.), said the bill will “reconnect Canadians to their Parliament by strengthening the role of their local elected member.”

Now that it is tabled, what are party leaders saying?

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair said he will vote for the bill, while Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, who “supports the goals” of the bill, said he hasn’t yet made up his mind how he will vote. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has not commented. The NDP and Liberals have promised a free vote on the bill while the Conservatives dodged questions about whether their MPs will be permitted to vote as they please. Here’s a selection of views:

“I’m going to be voting for this on principle because the principle involved is one that would seek to improve democracy in our society.” – NDP Leader Tom Mulcair

“I look forward to robust discussions with caucus before I decide how I will vote on it and I will decide how I vote on it not as leader of the Liberal party but very much as a member of Papineau representing my constituents.” – Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau

“We hold vastly more free votes than the opposition does.” — Pierre Poilievre, minister of state for democratic reform

“If there’s ever a bill that deserves being put to a free vote, it’s this one, given how much it touches on the rights and roles of MPs.” — Craig Scott, NDP reform critic

“It’s not about this government or this leader. It’s about future Parliaments.” – Conservative MP Larry Miller, who supports the bill

“This is not about partisan politics. This is about efficient and effective operation of the House.”
– Conservative MP Daryl Kramp

“I will work as hard as I can in support of Mr. Chong’s piece of legislation. I will make the case that anything that strengthens the role of Parliament strengthens our democracy.” — Conservative Sen. Hugh Segal

“There’s concerns with some of the language.” – Conservative MP Peter Goldring

Does the bill have any momentum?

–Conservative MPs James Rajotte (who seconded the bill), Stella Ambler and Larry Miller, Conservative Sen. Hugh Segal, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May and Independent MP Bruce Hyer showed up at Chong’s press conference Tuesday to show their support for his bill.

–MPs from all parties have expressed their support for the Reform Act through Twitter.

–Conservative-turned-Independent MP Brent Rathgeber published a whopping 1,000-word blog post to express his “wholehearted” support of the bill.

–Chong’s private member’s bill will be read for the second time in February or March. But private members’ bills rarely become law.

In an extraordinary statement released to the media, Conservative Sen. Noël Kinsella noted Mulcair “lives for free in a lovely house” in upscale Rockcliffe Park at Stornoway.

Stornoway is the official residence of the leader of the Opposition in the nation’s capital.

There is nothing in the Senate’s housing rules that forbids a senator from owning a house in Ottawa before joining the upper chamber. Nor do those rules require senators to spend a certain amount of time at their declared primary residence (in Kinsella’s case, New Brunswick) in order to qualify for a secondary housing allowance of $22,000 a year for their Ottawa home.

Kinsella went on to say in his statement that the rules allowing senators to claim a housing allowance if their home is more than 100 kilometres from Parliament Hill are similar to ones in place for MPs. “However MPs are not required to maintain a home in their ridings,” he wrote.

“Mr. Mulcair’s unfounded personal attack on a Liberal and a Conservative senator from New Brunswick amounts to an attack on his own NDP members,” Kinsella wrote. “While Thomas Mulcair as the Leader of the Opposition is given a house in Ottawa, the Leader of the Government in the Senate, the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate and the Speaker of the Senate all must make their own housing arrangements in Ottawa.”

Senators have told reporters at various points during the spending scandal that has engulfed the upper chamber for almost a year that tough questions should also be asked of elected representatives in the House of Commons. But Kinsella’s statement was the first time he stepped into the political fray that until recently he has avoided.

Unlike his counterpart in the House of Commons, the Speaker of the Senate is appointed by the prime minister and has the right to vote on bills and take part in debates in the upper chamber. Kinsella avoids doing both as a matter of principle, believing he needs to have an air of neutrality, yet he remains a partisan like any other senator.

Kinsella came under fire in the House of Commons Wednesday because he has claimed a secondary housing allowance for a home he bought in Ottawa before becoming a senator. Kinsella, who also oversees the Senate committee that supervises senators’ expenses, represents New Brunswick, where he also owns a home.

Kinsella was defended in the Commons by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who said neither his case – nor that of a Liberal Sen. Pierrette Ringuette who has a similar housing arrangement – should be compared to that of Sen. Mike Duffy. Duffy was found to have inappropriately claimed a secondary housing allowance for his Ottawa residence while representing Prince Edward Island.

Kinsella and Ringuette are both long-time residents of the province of New Brunswick, Harper said. In contrast, Duffy claimed his primary residence was in Prince Edward Island, when it was not, Harper told the Commons.

Harper was responding as Mulcair demanded to know why Kinsella and Ringuette were still in the upper chamber, given the housing claims.

Mulcair asked, “Conservative Sen. Noël Kinsella and Liberal Sen. Pierrette Ringuette pulled the exact same trick as Mike Duffy, the trick that, on Oct. 24, the prime minister said was the reason for getting rid of Mike Duffy. Why are Noël Kinsella and Pierrette Ringuette still in the Senate?”

Harper said, “Mr. Duffy was living at a long-time residence and claiming travel expenses. The two senators in question are long-time residents of the province of New Brunswick.”

Kinsella bought his home in Ottawa in 1989 while he was on leave from his job at St. Thomas Aquinas University to work as a senior foreign affairs civil servant. At the time, Kinsella also owned a home in Fredericton, N.B., a city he has had ties to since 1965. In 1990, Brian Mulroney appointed Kinsella to the Senate.

Ringuette bought her Ottawa home in 1998, the year after she lost her seat in the House of Commons in an election. In 2002, Jean Chretien appointed Ringuette to the Senate.

Both told Postmedia News that they filed the proper paperwork with the Senate to support their expense claims. As well, neither sparked any concerns from the committee that oversaw a review of housing expenses.

Kinsella said earlier this week that the red chamber still had work to do on its spending rules to make them “crystal clear.”

In his statement attacking Mulcair, Kinsella wrote that Mulcair’s views “on Canada’s bicameral parliament and the Senate of Canada are well known” — a reference to the NDP’s position that the Senate should be abolished.

In what’s shaping up to be a battle between two opposing visions for Canada’s resource economy, both Mulcair and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver addressed business leaders on the subject at opposite ends of the country.

Mulcair laid out his party’s vision for a “sustainable, balanced and prosperous energy future” in a speech before the Economic Club of Canada in Ottawa.

He framed his plan as an alternative “development model” to that of the Conservatives which is to “let mostly foreign companies come in and buy up whatever they can and leave a huge mess that’s going to be paid for by future generations.”

Oliver told the Vancouver Board of Trade that the NDP plan to strengthen the environmental assessment regime by overturning cabinet’s ability to unilaterally ignore the outcome of an assessment would effectively “kill” a number of the province’s liquefied natural gas projects.

“We are in a global race to get our (liquefied natural gas) to markets but the opportunity is perishable,” he said.

“An NDP overhaul is a recipe for instability and uncertainty at the very moment when businesses are deciding whether to make multibillion-dollar investments in the B.C. natural gas sector.”

Both Oliver and the Liberals also questioned Mulcair’s logic. If his plan is to let regulators decide the fate of energy projects, then he should support the Keystone XL pipeline which was approved by Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB) three years ago.

Mulcair has vehemently opposed the $5.3-billion link between Alberta’s oilsands and the U.S. Gulf Coast that still awaits U.S. approval. But on Wednesday, he insisted there’s no contradiction here.

“Based on our approach to sustainable development, we would have never sent it to the NEB. We would have insisted that we keep those jobs in Canada,” he said, while taking a stab at Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s promise to support the middle class.

“People who claim that they are in favour of middle class jobs are going to have a lot of difficulty explaining why they are actually in favor of exporting 40,000 middle class jobs to the United States.”

In his speech Wednesday, Mulcair promised one of his first “official acts” if elected prime minister in 2015 would be to attend a major international climate change conference in Paris.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been known to skip climate change conferences and it was just after the a UN summit in Durban in December 2011 that then-environment minister Peter Kent announced Canada was pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

“We’ll be there, working with our international allies, instead of working against them,” he said.

“If we’re going to leverage our resources to create wealth and prosperity for generations to come, then we’re going to have to rise to meet new challenges. . . . New Democrats have a vision that does just that — a vision that promotes economic growth without sacrificing social or environmental sustainability.”

Mulcair talked about building partnerships with provinces and First Nations communities to ensure everyone “benefits from resource development.”

He promised an NDP government would invest in renewable wind, solar and geothermal energy in a bid to create 20,000 new jobs in Canada, and in rail, tanker and pipeline safety standards to encourage energy projects rather than stymie them due to disasters and protests.

He vowed to put a price on carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade system and promised a national version of the Sustainable Development Act he brought to Quebec while he was that province’s environment minister.

As if a direct rebuttal to both the NDP’s proposals and widespread criticism of the government’s environmental record, Oliver stressed the importance of building bridges with First Nations communities and suggested Canada’s become a leader in renewable energy during his government’s reign.

GHG emissions are down and “we are making inroads in reducing the environmental footprint of the oilsands,” he said, adding efforts are also underway to improve pipeline and tanker safety.

That said, he argued Canada is too reliant on the U.S. for oil and gas exports and must look to growingmarkets in Asia to diversify

“These opportunities will not last forever and there is intense competition from around the world,” he said, noting that doesn’t take away from Canada’s duty to ensure projects respect the environment.

“Our plan for responsible resource development will translate into real economic results, strengthen environmental protection and enable aboriginal communities to participate in economic development opportunities.”

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]]>http://o.canada.com/news/mulcair-unveils-ndp-energy-policy-with-focus-on-the-environment/feed3MulcairtobicohenNDP to unveil energy plan focused on sustainability, First Nations partnershipshttp://o.canada.com/news/national/ndp-to-unveil-energy-plan-focused-on-sustainability-first-nations-parterships
http://o.canada.com/news/national/ndp-to-unveil-energy-plan-focused-on-sustainability-first-nations-parterships#respondTue, 03 Dec 2013 23:16:22 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=361150]]>OTTAWA — The NDP will roll out details of its “pan-Canadian” energy plan Wednesday — a plan focused on sustainability, partnerships with provinces and First Nations communities and long-term prosperity, Postmedia News has learned.

Leader Tom Mulcair is expected to announce plans to overhaul and strengthen the environmental assessment regime many critics and environmental activists accused the government of gutting in last year’s budget. The NDP would ultimately overturn cabinet’s ability to unilaterally ignore the outcome of an assessment. Critics fear the new rule would give the government the power to approve a pipeline, for example, even if the project fails to meet environmental standards.

NDP leader Thomas Mulcair speaks to reporters in the foyer of the House of Commons.

He will also announce the NDP’s intent to bring back the ecoenergy home retrofit program introduced by the Conservatives in 2007. The program, which ended last year, provided grants up to $5,000 to help homeowners increase energy efficiency. Mulcair will also speak about investing in renewable wind, solar and geothermal energy in a bid to create 20,000 new jobs in Canada, and in rail, tanker and pipeline safety standards to encourage energy projects rather than stymie them due to disasters and protests.

He will also talk about the possibility of a national version of an initiative he introduced in Quebec when he was that province’s environment minister. Quebec’s Europe-inspired Sustainable Development Act, something Mulcair often talks about as his crowning achievement in provincial politics, affirms the government’s commitment to the concept, which requires that economic, social and environmental impacts be taken into account before development decisions are made. The bill also made it a right under Quebec’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms to live in a healthy environment in which biodiversity is respected, and created a green fund to support provincial and municipal sustainable-development initiatives as well as provide stable funding to environmental groups.

Mulcair is expected to make the announcement during a speech to the Economic Club of Canada in Ottawa.

It follows a promise during the party’s September caucus retreat in Saskatoon where he vowed to focus more on “proposition” — that is, on unveiling what the party would do if it formed the government — instead of just opposition.

At the time, he said the NDP would reveal details of a “pan-Canadian” energy plan in the fall, and while the Senate expense scandal that has dominated the fall agenda raised questions about whether the plan may be scuttled, natural resources critic Peter Julian has insisted it won’t be.

“We’re continuing on with the work of showing leadership and developing an energy strategy and to put out there some of the major elements that will be part of the conversation over the next year,” said Julian, who was tasked with leading efforts to prepare the party’s energy strategy, which has taken him across Canada and to Europe. Along with Mulcair, he’s also visited a number of First Nations communities.

“Some of the things are things we’ve signalled already and others are new elements, but what it does is send a signal that in our opinion it’s very important to have an adult conversation around energy issues,” he added, noting that the Conservatives merely “condemn” those who raise questions about their “superficial approach,” largely focused on exporting raw resources.

“We need to have an adult conversation about the future of Canada when it comes to our natural resources and our energy resources … and I think that that adult conversation really gets launched (Wednesday).”

• He’s against the Keystone XL pipeline. He says it’s “not in Canada’s best interest” because it would export raw bitumen and more than 40,000 Canadian jobs to the United States.

• He’s against the Enbridge Northern Gateway project — a 1,177-kilometre pipeline that would transport 525,000 barrels of oil per day from near Edmonton to the port of Kitimat, B.C. From there, the product would be loaded onto supertankers and shipped to Asian markets.

• The NDP would prefer see product shipped to Quebec and Atlantic Canada through projects like TransCanada‘s proposed Energy East pipeline which, Mulcair argues, would keep value-added jobs in Canada.

• Mulcair has softened his tone on Kinder Morgan’s proposed twinning of the Trans Mountain Pipeline from Alberta to B.C. Former B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix’s decision midway through the election campaign to oppose the pipeline was considered a contributing factor in his party’s loss.

• Mulcair does not support a carbon tax on fuels, but has called for a cap-and-trade emissions-reduction scheme based on a principle that “polluters pay.” It’s a system not unlike the one the Conservatives previously supported.

• He argues Alberta’s oilsands are to blame for inflating the Canadian dollar and killing manufacturing jobs in Ontario. He calls it the “Dutch disease” and it’s got him in hot water on a number of occasions.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/ndp-to-unveil-energy-plan-focused-on-sustainability-first-nations-parterships/feed0NDP on energytobicohenNDP leader Thomas Mulcair speaks to reporters in the foyer of the House of Commons. Canadian political leaders continue to clash over the spelling of Hanukkahhttp://o.canada.com/news/chanukah-hanukkah-hannukah-canada
http://o.canada.com/news/chanukah-hanukkah-hannukah-canada#respondWed, 27 Nov 2013 17:00:50 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=357354]]>“The Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, Justin Trudeau, made the following statement today on Hanukkah …”

Regardless, there is a slightly (well, just slightly) more interesting subplot to it all — the decision by Trudeau’s team to spell the name of the Jewish festival of lights that way, even if it continues a tradition of how the Liberals decided it should translate into English.

Yet, in the Liberal party advertisement that appeared in the The Canadian Jewish News issue dated Nov. 28 — the first full day of the eight-day festival that will start this year on Wednesday night — the spelling of choice was actually “Hannukah”:

“Hanukkah” is the spelling typically used in the Canadian media based on the style guide issued by The Canadian Press although, in recent years, Conservative politicians have pointedly settled on calling it “Chanukah.”

At least there was some character to the Trudeau greetings, however — which is more than can be said for the CPC boilerplate from the Nov. 21 issue of the Jewish Tribune:

Conservative MP greetings for Chanukah have also started to appear on YouTube in line with the party’s effort to recognize as many different ethnic and religious voting blocks capable of rallying support at election time.

Liberal MP Irwin Cotler made a video with his genuine holiday wishes:

And the official statement in the House of Commons came from Conservative MP Mark Adler with a shout-out to Kenney for hosting an event:

Finally, the ghostwritten Twitter account of most notorious politician in the history of Canada stuck to the Conservative script:

Wishing Toronto's Jewish community, and those around the world, Chag Chanukah Sameach!

The NDP leader has received widespread praise for his clearly worded, rapid-fire question period grilling of the prime minister on the Senate expense scandal. His roll-up-the-red-carpet campaign seems to resonate with average Canadians. He’s proven the NDP can survive without Jack Layton.

But in the grand scheme of things, is survival enough? Will he be able to increase his seat count and elevate his party beyond official Opposition status?

Although the party had nothing to lose, having previously held none of the ridings, four byelections this week raise questions about whether the NDP has plateaued. In two Manitoba ridings, the party fell from second to third place. While the party increased its vote share in Toronto, it slid slightly in the Montreal riding of Bourassa, despite a star candidate.

It follows a major provincial upset in Nova Scotia last month after the first NDP government in Nova Scotia failed to win a second term and was demoted to third-party status. Months earlier, British Columbia Liberal leader Christy Clark soared to a majority victory despite pollsters who predicted a sure win for Adrian Dix’s NDP. And last month, little more than a year after Mulcair paid homage to the apparent growing popularity of the NDP in Newfoundland by having his fall caucus retreat in St. John’s, the provincial wing is in disarray with Lorraine Michaels facing a leadership review in May.

“Look, our caucus has got a spring in their step. Everyone’s in a good mood at having maintained our vote in Quebec, at having increased by 20 per cent the magnitude of our vote in Toronto-Centre which augurs super well for the Greater Toronto Area,” he said.

“We have a challenge in Manitoba. . . . We’re going to work really hard towards the next election to maintain the base that we’ve got, to work on it. Look, the positive offer we’re going to make is what’s going to translate into votes and into seats across the West and we know we’ve got a lot of work to do. We’re not . . . naive about that.”

Bruce Hicks, a political scientist at Carleton University in Ottawa, said the NDP clearly invested its resources in the ridings it thought it could win in Toronto and Montreal. So the loss of star candidates — former journalist Linda McQuaig in Toronto-Centre and Juno-winning pop star Stephane Moraille in Bourassa — he said, “should be troublesome” for the party.

TORONTO: NOVEMBER 20, 2013- NDP candidate Linda McQuaig takes part in the all-candidates debate for the Toronto Centre federal by-election in Toronto on November 20, 2013. (Michelle Siu for National Post)

While the NDP “ignored the two Manitoba ridings to a large extent,” Hicks said it, too, should nonetheless be cause for concern for the party, which benefits from two types of voters in Western Canada — true progressives and protest voters.

He said the byelection in Brandon-Souris suggests voters are “not turning to the NDP in their dislike of the Conservatives.

“The fact that so many people who would have voted NDP voted Liberal in Manitoba has to worry them a bit,” he said — particularly given how hard Mulcair’s been working during question period trying to keep people “dissatisfied with the Conservative government.”

Pollster Nik Nanos said the poor showing in Manitoba can be attributed in part to the fact the NDP is in government provincially and has recently come under fire for an unpopular tax hike. But while “fair to say the controversy plaguing the provincial NDP spilled over a bit,” he said the drop was significant enough to suggest much more was at play. While the party didn’t lose a seat, the byelection shows that for all Mulcair’s efforts in the House of Commons, it did not “convert into political coattails in the byelections.”

He argued the NDP’s biggest challenge going forward is to “convert their brand from being an effective Opposition to being a government in waiting.” The way to do that, he said, is to lay out what an NDP government would do on issues like health care and the economy well ahead of the election.

Mulcair has repeatedly said he’s not just about opposition; proposition is also key and he has promised to roll out concrete plans, including the NDP’s vision for the economy, around now, but Nanos wonders if the Senate spending scandal hasn’t shifted his priorities.

“I think the Senate scandal was an unanticipated political windfall that you just can’t avoid, you can’t ignore,” he said of the issue which has in many ways consumed Ottawa and the daily question period. “But at the same time for the New Democrats, to have an impact they have to stick to their original strategy, which is to propose.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/ndp-byelection-shutout-raise-questions-about-partys-future-experts-say/feed0MulcairtobicohenNDP candidate Linda McQuaig tWhen a win looks a lot like a losshttp://o.canada.com/news/national/when-a-win-looks-a-lot-like-a-loss
http://o.canada.com/news/national/when-a-win-looks-a-lot-like-a-loss#commentsThu, 28 Nov 2013 01:26:59 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=357777]]>If you were determined to be obtuse about it, you could look at the results of Monday’s byelections and say: nothing changed. The Tories held onto their two seats in the West, the Liberals held onto theirs in Ontario and Quebec. Move along folks, no story here.

You could do this, as I say, only if you took extravagant care to ignore everything else that happened that night: If you focused myopically on the top-line result in each riding, and paid no attention to the popular vote — the trend, the swing, across the nation and over time.

In private, I can assure you, no one in any of the parties does this. Only in the public realm do they say things like “a win’s a win” — which is what you say when a win looks a lot like a loss — and only the most programmed partisans actually mean it.

Only in the most literal sense is the Tories’ 391-vote margin in Brandon-Souris, one of the safest Conservative seats in the country, a “win.” Even the partisans found this hard to say with a straight face. Rather, they were obliged first to pretend that a Forum Research poll showing the Liberals ahead by 29 points the weekend before the election had some basis in reality, the better to conjure up a fantasy “comeback.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper poses with his new members of parliament Ted Falk for Provencher (left) and Larry Maguire for Brandon-Souris outside 24 Sussex Drive on Wednesday November 27, 2013 in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

To be sure, every party comes well-stocked with rationalizations on occasions like these, usually introduced by “when you consider” or some such phrase. As in: The Conservatives did pretty well, when you consider we’re in the throes of a massive national scandal. Or: the NDP collapse in Manitoba is understandable, when you consider the unpopularity of the province’s NDP government. It’s not cold, when you consider it’s February.

We would have done better, in other words, but for the fact that we did worse. Figures don’t lie, but losers can consider.

But there’s just no spinning this one. The trends are too pronounced. Across all four ridings, the Tory vote was down 11 points versus the 2011 election, from 39 per cent to 28 per cent, almost exactly mirroring the national polls. The NDP, which might have been expected to gain the most from the Tories’ disfavour — when you consider how well Tom Mulcair has been performing in Parliament — instead dropped five points overall, while the Liberals surged 18 points.

If the drop in the Tory vote was the night’s main story, the rise in the Liberals’ was the other. In Provencher and Brandon-Souris, the Grits blew past the NDP to become the Tories’ main rivals, taking as many votes from the left as they did from the right. In Toronto Centre and Bourassa, they increased their margins of victory, even in the face of spirited challenges from the NDP. Conservative candidates in the East both lost their deposits, as NDP candidates did in the West. Only the Liberals were up across the board.

But the true significance of the result is captured, not by comparison to the last election, but set against the broad sweep of history. The 8.7 per cent of the vote the Conservatives managed to hold onto in Toronto Centre — the riding of David Crombie and David MacDonald — is the party’s worst showing in any election in that riding since Confederation.

The Conservative candidate in Bourassa, likewise, took less than five per cent of the vote. That is the second-worst showing for the Conservatives in that riding since 1968, when it was created. (Only 2000, when they split the vote with the Canadian Alliance, was worse.) By contrast, the Liberals’ 43 per cent showing in Brandon-Souris was not only a 37 per cent increase over 2011, it was their best ever.

Nothing changed? Come on. We can argue about the reasons, we can debate what it portends, but on the night, there’s no getting away from it: The Conservatives were spanked. No doubt it would have been even worse for the Tories had they actually lost Brandon-Souris (“not unexpected, when you consider the Liberal candidate was the son of the riding’s long-time former Conservative MP”), but the results ought to prompt some deep reflection among the party’s leadership.

No, the Senate scandal is not likely to be at the top of most voters’ minds two years from now. But I rather doubt the Senate scandal, on its own, is what has driven one in four Tory voters to abandon the party: As I say, the polls have been showing the same thing for some time. It’s everything that went before it, and everything that’s happened since.

It’s the general impression that we are being governed by a gang of thugs — secretive, high-handed, unprincipled gusting to unethical, and openly contemptuous of such quaint notions as democratic accountability — an impression that grows more baked in each time the prime minister dodges a question in Parliament, or worse, sends in the clownish Paul Calandra to answer in his place.

At the same time, it’s clear the NDP have a lot of work to do to convince voters, not just of the Conservatives’ faults, but of their own virtues as their putative replacements. It must gall Mulcair, after all his weight and substance, to see the voters flock instead to the lighter-than-air Justin Trudeau. But he still has lots of time to turn things around.

For that matter, so does Stephen Harper. The difference is, Mulcair seems to realize he needs to.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/when-a-win-looks-a-lot-like-a-loss/feed10.000000 0.0000000.0000000.000000Federal Byelections 20131125andrewcoynePrime Minister Stephen Harper Conservative candidate Larry Maguire Chair of Royal Canadian Mint should be dismissed over tax-haven allegations, Mulcair sayshttp://o.canada.com/news/chair-of-royal-canadian-mint-should-be-dismissed-over-tax-haven-allegations-mulcair-says
http://o.canada.com/news/chair-of-royal-canadian-mint-should-be-dismissed-over-tax-haven-allegations-mulcair-says#commentsWed, 27 Nov 2013 20:23:54 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=357499]]>OTTAWA – The official Opposition is demanding that Jim Love, chair of the Royal Canadian Mint, be removed from his position following a media report that he orchestrated an elaborate tax-shelter scheme for the wealthy descendants of a former prime minister.

“Why did the government give a plum job to someone who was to act as a tax adviser on policy for the Conservatives when they knew — or ought to have known — that he was organizing stratagems so that rich Conservative families would not pay their taxes?” Mulcair demanded in the House of Commons Wednesday.

“Why hasn’t he been fired yet?”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper described a lawsuit against Love over his handling of former prime minister Arthur Meighen’s fortune, reported by the CBC, as a “dispute between two private parties before the court.”

“I’m obviously not going to comment on that,” Harper said.

Harper’s remarks come a day after documents obtained by the CBC appeared to show how Love, a Toronto tax lawyer, chair of the Mint and long-time friend of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, helped transfer more than $8 million of the Meighen fortune to offshore accounts so the family would save on taxes.

Love was taken to court in 2008 by two of Meighen’s great-grandaughters who alleged he was acting negligently. Among their grievances was that Love, in moving some of the Meighen trust’s money to offshore tax havens, exposed the family to “taxes, interest and penalties.” The lawsuit was quietly settled in 2011 with Love, his lawyers, his trust company and Canada Trust ponying up $8.9 million, according to the CBC. No one admitted any fault.

Though Love – who was appointed to the Mint’s board in 2006 and made chair in 2009 – has not been charged with any wrongdoing, opposition leaders questioned whether someone engaged in such actions should have been appointed to head an important national institution.

“Taking someone like that in that situation, that’s the message they want to send? It’s an ethical and moral question, giving him a plum job like that,” Mulcair told reporters.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, who did not call for Love’s employment to be terminated, nonetheless told reporters the revelations illustrate how the government “has regularly failed in it’s appointments process.”

Murray Rankin, critic for national revenue, called on government to launch an independent investigation into Love’s activities and challenged Flaherty in Question Period to “stand up to his well-connected friend.”

The Mint referred questions about Love to the Department of Finance and said Love would not be granting interviews. Flaherty’s office declined comment and referred questions to the media relations office for the department, which also declined comment.

— With files from Mike De Souza and Tobi Cohen, Postmedia News.

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]]>http://o.canada.com/news/chair-of-royal-canadian-mint-should-be-dismissed-over-tax-haven-allegations-mulcair-says/feed2Throne speech: BudgetandreapostmediaIs Justin Trudeau a hypocrite when it comes to pitching ‘positive politics’?http://o.canada.com/news/is-justin-trudeau-a-hypocrite-when-it-comes-to-pitching-positive-politics
http://o.canada.com/news/is-justin-trudeau-a-hypocrite-when-it-comes-to-pitching-positive-politics#commentsWed, 27 Nov 2013 16:43:36 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=357337]]>Liberal leader Justin Trudeau has vowed to run a campaign based on “positive politics,” free of the negative attacks that have become a political staple.

However, actions by himself and his party would suggest otherwise.

Several images appeared online last week of flyers distributed during the byelection in Toronto Centre that was held on Monday with Liberal candidate Chrystia Freeland winning the seat that was previously held by interim party leader Bob Rae.

Trudeau further riled up NDP supporters on Monday night when, after Freeland took the seat, he invoked the dying words of former NDP leader Jack Layton.

“Make no mistake, the NDP is no longer the hopeful, optimistic party of Jack Layton,” said Trudeau. “It is the negative, divisive party of Thomas Mulcair. It is the Liberal party tonight that proved hope is stronger than fear, that positive politics can and should win out over the negative.”

The words come from the legendary letter Layton wrote shortly before his death in August 2011 that ended, “My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”

The reference may have appeared to some as a poor example of “positive politics.”

“That Justin Trudeau would use Jack Layton’s dying words as a political tool says everything that needs to be said about Justin Trudeau’s judgment and character,” Mulcair told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday, after pausing for a moment to weigh his words.

Trudeau defended his use of Layton’s words, saying he was inspired by the late leader.

“I am, as many people are, inspired by Jack Layton’s legacy and the way that he approached politics,” said Trudeau. “I’m very, very proud that across the country, in all four byelections, the Liberal party ran a positive campaign that was focused on bringing people together and not on attacking or smearing our opponents.”

It’s worth noting that Layton himself certainly didn’t claim to be above using attack ads. While serving as NDP leader, the party released numerous ads going after the Conservatives and the Liberals. For example, this radio ad from 2009 says former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has “thrown his lot in with Stephen Harper, a person average families can’t trust to look out for them.”

Trudeau defended the Liberal party’s campaign during the byelections, such as the Mulcair flyer, saying that pointing out that other people are being negative is not being negative.

“When you’re being positive, when you’re being focused on bringing people together and not playing negative politics and other people are, I don’t think it’s negative to highlight the fact that people are being negative around you when you’re not attacking and not being negative,” said Trudeau, according to CBC News.

During the byelections, the NDP and Conservatives both used negative ads during their campaigns — but they also didn’t publicly declare they wouldn’t. However, like Trudeau, McQuaig defended the tone of the messages her party used, including drawing attention to the fact that Freeland only moved back to Toronto a few months ago.

“That’s a true fact and I do think that’s something that voters in Toronto Centre have a right to know,” McQuaig told The Canadian Press, noting that Freeland calls the riding her “home” in her campaign literature without revealing that “it’s only been her home for four weeks.”

Similarly, NDP national director Nathan Rotman argued there’s nothing wrong with campaign messages that encourage voters to “compare and contrast” candidates or which criticize an opponent’s record or policy stances. Such approaches aren’t the same as personal attacks, he said.

The only major party who’s maintained a positive tone is the Green Party, who currently hold one seat in Parliament. Their “Change the Channel” campaign urges an end to political attack ads in Canada.

With a file from The Canadian Press.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/is-justin-trudeau-a-hypocrite-when-it-comes-to-pitching-positive-politics/feed5TrudeaulaurenstrapaNo NDP wins, but Mulcair happy with party’s showing in byelectionshttp://o.canada.com/news/no-ndp-wins-but-mulcair-happy-with-partys-showing-in-byelections
http://o.canada.com/news/no-ndp-wins-but-mulcair-happy-with-partys-showing-in-byelections#respondTue, 26 Nov 2013 23:17:41 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=357000]]>OTTAWA — The NDP — the only major federal party that failed to pick up seats in Monday’s four byelections — is still riding the wave of the orange crush, party Leader Thomas Mulcair told reporters outside the House of Commons on Tuesday.

Mulcair stressed that the NDP saw its “best result ever” in the traditional Liberal riding of Toronto Centre, where his “star” candidate Linda McQuaig took 36 per cent of the vote — up from 30 per cent in 2011. Mulcair also highlighted that NDP support held steady in the Montreal riding of Bourassa, which also went to the Liberals.

“The only result that would have been better would have been to steal one of those safe Liberal seats,” Mulcair said.

But the NDP was less successful in the Manitoba ridings of Provencher and Brandon-Souris, Conservative strongholds which were both reclaimed by the Tories.

In Provencher, a riding that Conservative Ted Falk took with almost 60 per cent of the vote, the NDP saw just 8 per cent of the vote, down from 18 per cent in 2011. In the squeaker riding of Brandon-Souris where the Conservatives beat out the Liberals by just 391 votes, the NDP candidate won 7 per cent of the vote, down from 25 per cent in 2011.

“There’s no question that local conditions played a lot into the result in Manitoba, with which we’re disappointed,” Mulcair told reporters. “We’ve got a lot to do, clearly, in Manitoba.”

Though the byelections maintained the status quo in the Commons, the results were viewed as a victory for the Liberals who increased their vote share in all four ridings.

At a victory party in Bourassa, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau crowed about his success and took a jab at the NDP.

“Make no mistake, the NDP is no longer the hopeful, optimistic party of Jack Layton. It is the negative, divisive party of Thomas Mulcair,” Trudeau said. “It is the Liberal Party tonight that proved hope is stronger than fear.”

The line — which played on the famous death-bed letter that late NDP leader Jack Layton penned to Canadians — did not sit well with the NDP.

“That Justin Trudeau would use Jack Layton’s dying words as a political tool says everything that needs to be said about Justin Trudeau’s judgment and character,” Mulcair told reporters.

Both are Haitian. Both are extremely successful in their fields. And both are considered role models of something better in the poor, violence-plagued, multicultural federal riding they seek to represent.

Liberal Emmanuel Dubourg and New Democrat Stephane Moraille are vying to replace former Liberal MP Denis Coderre, who left federal politics after 16 years to become Montreal’s mayor.

Of four federal byelections taking place Monday, Bourassa riding in particular is viewed as a litmus test for the 2015 general federal election. Will the NDP’s 59-seat sweep of Quebec in 2011 – the so-called “Orange Crush” – prove a blip in history or the start of a trend? Will the Liberals hold the riding Coderre once dominated – and begin restoring what they see as the natural order of things, by boosting the mere seven Quebec seats they won in 2011?

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau and NDP leader Tom Mulcair have both made frequent trips to the riding to campaign with their candidates. In the final week, Mulcair was there twice.

A recent public opinion poll suggested Dubourg, a Quebec Liberal thrice elected to the National Assembly and a former Canada Revenue Agency accountant, had half the vote locked up. Yet Moraille argues the tide is shifting.

“I’m on the ground. I do door-to-door almost everyday,” she said over a four-course steak lunch at a Greek restaurant that is also her unofficial campaign headquarters. The former Bran Van 3000 singer and entertainment lawyer quipped about her hearty appetite and the weight she’s gained since her days as a ballerina and Zumba instructor.

“The way people talk about us has changed,” she said. “We feel it. There’s something happening. We might take it.”

Whether it’s her earthy personality or her sharp attacks – she’s been accused of waging a negative campaign, regularly slamming Dubourg for giving up his neighbouring provincial seat to take a stab at federal politics and accepting $100,000 severance in the process – the NDP message may be resonating.

“I voted for the NDP because I think the NDP will do more than the others. I’m convinced of Mr. Mulcair,” said one voter, Pierre Bernier, who previously backed Coderre. “The Liberals: Trudeau is still too young.”

Moraille promises to amend the Criminal Code to make assaulting taxi drivers — many of whom live in the riding — an aggravating factor during sentencing and wants to push for a tax credit for taxi drivers who switch to green vehicles. She has thrown her support behind Haitian activists protesting the Dominican Republic’s recent decision to strip citizenship from thousands of children of Haitian migrants.

Dubourg, who has also faced criticism for leaving a candidate’s debate early and for failing to take as strong a stand on the Dominican issue, said he isn’t worried.

He argued the NDP isn’t the same without Jack Layton. And he defended his severance, noting nine per cent of every Quebec politician’s paycheque is set aside for this purpose.

“I like to meet people to tell them who I am, my professional background, what I did in the National Assembly and to tell them what I would like to do for them,” he said before heading to a run-down mall to doorstop shopkeepers and patrons.

Youth unemployment and security issues are among his chief concerns and he’s proposes to a “round table of elected officials.” By working more closely with his provincial and municipal counterparts, he wants to better serve constituents who don’t always know which level of government to turn to.

He wears fancy suits, gold rings and drives an expensive sport utility vehicle through the rough-and-tumble riding, pointing out his old high school and the home he grew up in with his single mother and three older sisters, not far from the infamous 2008 police shooting of Fredy Villanueva.

His dad died when he was three months old. He speaks fondly of his mother Elvire, a seamstress, and regrets she never got to see him succeed in politics, having died four years before he was first elected to the provincial legislature.

He’s also a single dad who divorced 18 years ago and shared custody of his two, now adult, boys.

“There’s a lot of young people in the riding who have the same kind of situation,” he said. “I think that those young people will see me maybe as a role model.”

tcohen@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/tobicohen

Bourassa at a glance

– Population: 100,453

– Immigrant population: 36,080

– Visible minority population: 39,145

– Median age of population: 42

– After French, the most common languages spoken at home are: English, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and Creole

– Average income: $25,986

– Source: 2011 Census

Emmanuel Dubourg at a glance

– Liberal member of Quebec National Assembly for Viau riding (elected three times since 2007)

– Chartered accountant with Canada Revenue Agency, teacher

– Spent two years as an international consultant on taxation in Mali

Stephane Moraille

– Entertainment and media law lawyer

– Former singer with Juno award-winning Canadian band Bran Van 3000, famous for the single “Drinking in L.A.”, one-time Cecchetti Council of America ballerina and cardio-funk dance instructor

– Parents named her Stephane because they thought she was going to be a boy.